This was a difficult reading month for me. First, I traveled quite a bit and didn't have as much time for reading., which is always an impediment to reading complex books. And of course everything <waves arms around> seems designed to distract me and not allow me to sink into difficult books and enjoy them. It also didn't help that I was in the middle of a couple of books that I was having a hard time enjoying in the first place.
In the end, of the 11 books I read this month, 8 of them were historical mysteries, my go-to comfort reads. I am, by the way, continuing my year-long read of Don Quixote, which I am enjoying. I am also continuing my year-long read of Clarissa, which I am enjoying less.
These are the books I finished in March:
Murder in Old Bombay by Nev March
Desperately looking for some distraction amongst <waves arms around> I saw that this novel had won a Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Award. And, even better, it was immediately available through the library. This is a murder mystery set in Bombay in the late 1800's. It involves (yet again) a Parsee family (this is my year for reading novels about Parsees). The daughter and daughter-in-law of a prominent man have been killed by falling (being pushed?) from a clock tower. Jim Agnihotri, a Anglo-Indian military officer recuperating in a hospital, becomes interested in the resulting court case in which it is determined the women must have committed suicide. Retiring from the Army he decides to look into it and ends up being hired by the family who don't believe it was suicide. This was a surprisingly long novel and covered a large swath of Indian history. I can see why it won a first novel award but hopefully the sequel novels are shorter.
An Old, Cold Grave by Iona Wishaw
This is one of the books in the Lane Winslow mystery series that I started last year. These mysteries are set in a small community in western Canada in the 1930s. I like the characters in this series and in general I like Wishaw's writing but she structures her stories to take the reader back in time so that they know more about what happened than the people investigating the case, which I don't like. This involved the skeletal remains of a child found buried on a local farm. The death obviously took place many years previously. The plot relied on a lot of coincidences to solve the case. I'm not sure I will read any more of this series.
A Rogue's Company by Allison Montclair
This is the third of the Sparks and Bainbridge mystery series set in late 1940's post-war London. Iris Sparks and Gwendolyn Bainbridge run the Right Sort Marriage Bureau but are regularly caught up in solving mysteries. This installment involves Gwen's crusty father-in-law, recently returned from Africa and acting odd. As usual with this series, the process of resolving the mystery requires some suspension of disbelief but I still enjoy it, mostly because I enjoy the two main characters.
Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America by Michael John Witgen
A non-fiction book telling how the Anishinaabeg resisted removal from their tribal lands in what is now Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, this is a very "scholarly" book (meaning that it is slow reading for the non-scholar). There is a lot of good information in it but I didn't enjoy reading it as much as Witgen's last book, An Infinity of Nations. This may be because it was about, as he put it, the Political Economy of Plunder and the plunder continues against Native American lands and others - and in fact against our whole economy. This book was an honorable mention for a Pulitzer Prize in 2023 but truthfully I found it a bit of a slog.
Frank: Sonnets by Diane Seuss
I bought this book of poetry a few years ago when it won the Pulitzer Prize but in the wake of the pandemic I found it too raw to read. A few years of waiting didn't change that. I don't know enough about poetry to appreciate how Seuss uses the sonnet form in what is apparently an original way (or so say the reviews I read). The topics of her poem are mostly about sadness and suffering, including people she lost in the AIDS epidemic and a son who overdoses. Truthfully, I actively disliked this collection and almost stopped reading it many times.
The Cold Light of Day by Anna Lee Huber
The latest released Verity Kent mystery, this novel finds Verity in Dublin following World War I during the fight for Irish Independence. I admit to an aversion to novels set in Ireland during this time period; the violence of the period (that continued into my lifetime in Northern Ireland) is always too much for me to handle. Huber clearly did a lot of research because she seems to reference every assassination and killing that took place during the 2-3 month period in which the novel is set. However, I do like Verity Kent as a character - an intelligence operative during WWI she can't talk about it because of the Official Secrets Act. I was somewhat disappointed that this ended on a cliffhanger which means we'll be returning to Dublin in the next book.
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
The only other book by Nabokov that I've read was Lolita, which I thought was a masterpiece. So I was willing to join in this BlueSky readalong even though I had never heard of this novel. I don't really know what to make of it. It is in part a 1,000 line poem and in part "notes' to the poem which aren't really notes but really the novel itself. The narrator is unreliable but it was never clear to me whether he was making the whole thing up OR whether most of the bones of the story were true but his point of view was delusional. There was a twist - maybe. All in all, I didn't really enjoy this novel although part of the problem may have been that I was traveling a lot this month and couldn't keep up with the reading. Or maybe the problem was that this is the kind of novel that should be read in one or two sittings rather than over a month.
The Unkept Woman by Allison Montclair
The fourth in the Sparks and Bainbridge mystery series, this novel finds Sparks accused of murder while Bainbridge has decided to try to be declared legally competent, which means she shouldn't get caught up in any more murders according to her barrister. I enjoy this series even though I think many of the situations are farfetched. I like the location and time period (London after WWII). I don't, however, think that the characters SOUND very British, which isn't really a problem for me. But it did make me curious and yes it turns out that Allison Montclair (a pseudonym) isn't British.
A Fatal Illusion by Anna Lee Huber
Anna Lee Huber's other mystery series, the Lady Darby mysteries, are set in the early 1800's during the reign of William IV (the uncle of Queen Victoria). In this installment, her irascible father-in-law has been set upon by highwaymen and while he recovers they search for the perpetrators. I enjoy this series, but not as much as the Verity Kent series (I like Verity's time period better). This one definitely had a surprise at the end that, in an afterward, Huber says is based upon a true story.
Murder Crossed Her Mind by Stephen Spotswood
The next in the Pentecost & Parker mysteries, this one involves the search for an elderly woman who is the retired secretary from a law firm that Forest Whitsun formerly worked for. Showing that he does have a heart, Whitsun has regularly visited her and brought her groceries. Worried about her whereabout he asks Pentecost & Parker to find her. Warning: this ends on a cliffhanger (which the author apologizes for in an afterward). Fortunately, I was able to get the next book fairly quickly.
Dead in the Frame by Stephen Spotswood
This resolves the cliffhanger and frankly I don't think the author played fair in this because he introduced a new fact at the very end that allowed the mystery to be solved. There was also a deus ex machina event that bothered me too - it seemed designed solely to remind us of a character from the other books who, I assume, will eventually come back into the story. As a character study of Lilian, it was well done. It appears that the next volume will focus on Lilian's past. Truthfully, I always feel that when a mystery series begins to focus solely on personal issues of the main characters, it has lost its way. But we'll see. In general, I still like the series.
