Library Limelights 190

J.T. Ellison. Where All the Dead Lie. Toronto: MIRA Books, 2011.

Ellison's Nashville detective Taylor Jackson is the lead in a popular crime series. This particular novel is about midway in the series, beginning with Taylor's recovery from a ghastly experience with a killer; in fact she has lost her voice. Her best friend Sam suffered even more with less aftereffects. Not yet deemed fit to return to work, Taylor is offered by a Brit friend (and cop), James "Memphis" Highsmythe, a quiet healing retreat at his Scottish estate/castle. The idea suits her and she goes. It's also a chance to examine her relationship with John Baldwin, and her attraction to Memphis. Nevertheless, even with a psychotherapist available, Taylor's guilt at failing Sam torments her and the castle ghosts take advantage. Is Taylor's deteriorating mental health real, or a sinister plan? Detective work takes a back seat in this plot.

Aspects of a romance novel permeate the story, to my annoyance. Only when I'd finished reading did I notice in the author's Acknowledgments, the reference to MIRA/Harlequin. Aha. Other elements were jarring: no need for dwelling on Sam's gruesome autopsies (to keep up the policing end? relief from Taylor's ongoing hallucinations?); a few contradictions in timing and weather; awkward characterization that breaks the attempted spell of romancing the Highlands ("God, he wanted to rut with her until his balls ached." - 111) lapsing into the profane. Down to quibbling, why give two of the main women male names? And the worst nickname ever: Memphis. Ultimately a bodice-ripper masquerading as a shades-of-Manderley story. An off of writer, to boot. Not trying that again. What a far cry from a true reality star - V.I. Warshawski.

One-liners:

▪ Taylor was a cactus with everyone these days. (77)

▪ He wanted to crawl into her hair and pull it around him like a blanket. (111)

▪ Taylor had been trained, and was in the grip of a Valkyrie fury. (348)

Multi-liners:

▪ Now she was only half a woman, half herself. A crazy little girl shut up in a castle, too tired to play princess anymore. (11)

▪ "We've talked about you having PTSD. You should hear yourself sleep. You moan and scream and yell." (21)

▪ Baldwin was rational, whereas Memphis was unreasonable. Violence hid just underneath his polished surface. (94)

▪ Maybe she needed to back off the Percocets? The dreams were getting crazier and crazier. (213)

▪ "That's not biofeedback. That's hypnosis." (310)

Short-term stalemate:

It was readily apparent that she wasn't ready to go back to fieldwork. If she wouldn't be allowed to do anything but drive a desk, that would make her stir-crazy. 

Getting away, being alone, appealed so much. She was tired of people trying to help. Of being babysat, and chauffeured, and looked at with pity. And suspicion. She couldn't help but read the subtext of her day—Taylor, we love you, but you're just not ready. Maybe they had a point. And face it, people got hurt when she was around, whether they were strangers, friends or lovers. (74)

Noble Memphis:

He'd always downplayed his status in the aristocracy, and she'd felt a connection to him because of that—the desire to make it on your own, to alter your past, to force your parents' aspirations away and lead your own life, free of the encumbrances that came with wealth.What a lying sack of shit he was. Freaking viscount. 

The "house" was a full-fledged castle, right out of her wildest imagination. Complete with towers and turrets and crenellations, and what used to be a moat, now filled with grass and gravel. There was even a portcullis topped with leering gargoyles. (115)

Spilled her secrets:

"Try speaking aloud." 

"What..." Oh God, it was like swallowing razor blades. She shook her head. 

Maddee reached across and took Taylor's hand. She smiled widely."There's nothing wrong with your voice. You spoke just fine for the past fifteen minutes." 

"I... No." 

"Yes." Maddee nodded, still grinning. 

Oh, my God. She had said those things. (178-9)

Hindsight:

Oh. God. He'd been kissing her where his wife died? 

Jesus. Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick. What the hell was all that then? What sort of strange compulsion had led him to take her to the very spot his wife died to try and kick-start their relationship? (211-2)

Catriona McPherson. Come to Harm. USA: Midnight Ink, 2015.

Cultures collide slightly when Keiko Nishisato comes to Scotland to prepare her graduate thesis in psychology, funded by a village council. Not just any village ‒ Painchton is full of welcoming people who may be hiding secrets. Provided with an apartment, Keiko makes friends with Fancy the entrepreneurial shopkeeper who quickly improves her colloquial English. Craig the hotel-keeper's nephew, Malcolm the butcher, and his brother Murray who came home for his father Duncan's recent funeral, also befriend her. When Keiko discovers an anonymous threatening letter hidden behind her radiator, she determines to uncover the enigma. Her thesis plan involving nutrition slowly shifts as the villagers become her test subjects.

A quirky mystery from a clever author. This would be my least favourite McPherson so far ‒ it delivers only opaque hints to the village mysteries yet is often greatly charming. Some characters are not fully-fleshed, although food and diet of various individuals are definitive. The villagers frequently leave their sentences unfinished, dismissing Keiko's personal probing. It's what they don't say that is so telling, forcing readers to fill in details with assumptions about macabre secrets, perhaps related to the father's death or three missing young women. Certainly I will be looking at McPherson again.

One-liners:

▪ "Your tongue's that sharp sometimes, Sandra, you could floss your teeth from inside." (75)

▪ "My father used to say, if you can't keep your foot out of your mouth, you could always get work in a circus." (92)

▪ She always wore lipstick of a good, clear pink (he disliked to see a woman of their age without a bit of lipstick almost as much as he loathed the overdone lips of girls, either too bright and sticky or too thickly coated, pale as wax). (203)

▪ Malcolm swung the meat up and rested it against the back of his wrist twisting it this way and that to show it off like a waiter with a bottle of vintage wine. (269)

Multi-liners:

▪ Also this bathroom, with its long white bath and no shower at all, just two knobbly taps sticking out at one end for the hot and cold water. She would have to sit in her dirt like a dumpling in broth, or crouch like an animal and pour cups of water over herself. (3)

▪ "How many times did I tell you?" the woman shouted. "Japanese people can't eat dairy. What's wrong with you?" (43)

▪ "Me?" said Murray. "I laugh so I don't scream." (104)

▪ There were four people wound like springs with worry. Five if she counted Jimmy McKendrick. Six if Mrs. Watson's dropping the cauliflower that day was proof of anything. (229)

The evolving thesis:

"Actually," she said, "I've changed my proposal a little from the version I sent initially. I hope," she lowered her voice, "I hope Mr. McKendrick won't mind." 

"Couldn't tell the difference if one was green and one was his granny," said Craig. 

Keiko let out a sigh. "Well," she said, "I'm still interested in nutritionism as new folklore. Feeding Belief was the title I sent." Both boys looked at her blankly. "But I'm less interested in the content than the movement of the knowledge itself now. In dense networks." More blank looks. "My new title is Hot Gossip: the mechanics of construing common knowledge in social groups." 

"Jesus Christ," said Murray. "You're kidding." (39)

Hangovers:

Fancy quelled her with a stare. "God knows what Craig was there for," she said. "God knows what Murray was doing not being there. God knows what poor Malcolm thought he was doing. It was just an awkward situation and we all drank too much and nobody'll mention it again and no harm done. We won't see Craig again till the Christmas holidays now anyway," she said. "With any luck." 

"I should forget about everything and concentrate on work," said Keiko. 

"Get lost. I'm the one who should forget, since there's nothing to remember," said Fancy. "What you should do is get Murray out on a proper date—not in Painchton, with no home-cooking and absolutely no pink cocktails." (193)

McKendrick muses:

What have you started, Duncan Poole? he thought. Weren't we all going to live forever? Well, God rest you, you bugger (which was as close as he would ever get to a prayer), you've opened the door and let the draft in now. (199)

David Baldacci. End Game. USA: Grand Central Publishing/Hachette, 2017.

One of Baldacci's most harrowing scenarios yet: freshly back from two separate missions, Will Robie and Jessica Reel are sent to find their missing boss, Roger Walton, whom they call Blue Man. The CIA sharpshooting experts are a little out of their normal field to be acting as detectives in the wide open spaces of eastern Colorado ― the perfect venue for isolated camps of skinheads, religious zealots, and anti-government communities. All loaded with guns. That's also where some abandoned missile silos exist, not all that abandoned, as they discover. Our heroes run up against several hostile groups, to no avail in locating Blue Man. They do learn his childhood sweetheart still lives in the area, operating a successful medical cannabis business (yes).

Along with the remarkable pace, the ambivalent personal relationship between Robie and Reel continues; local law enforcement members in the town of Grand add some one-night distractions. A cartoonish bad guy, a bit over the top, doesn't slow down the action. Without a doubt, it's an intense shoot-em-up adventure (Baldacci knows a lot about guns!). Crack shots and ingenuity ultimately save them although a few hostages bite the dust. Baldacci's always great for non-stop thrills.

Word: dungarees - A word that still insists on cropping up in U.S. novels, a word never used in Canada, to my knowledge. Meaning "denim; blue jeans." Have you ever heard someone actually use that word? Speak it out loud? WTF?

One-liners:

▪ So in addition to being possible skinheads they were dickheads. (69)

▪ "I wonder how you wake up one day and decide to build a store in the middle of nowhere," said Reel. (150)

▪ "I'm not lying on a couch and you're not my shrink." (273)

Multi-liners:

▪ "You don't want to squander chances with your family," added Robie, drawing a quick glance from Reel. "You never know if you'll get a second shot to make it right." (140)

▪ "I'm too old for curfews, Will," she said with a smile. "You look troubled." (277)

▪ You can do this, Jessica. This isn't as hard as what you did back in Iraq. Nothing is as hard as what you did back in Iraq. (385)

▪ As he fell dead to the floor with a hole in his face, Reel looked over at Robie. "You have a problem with that?" (391)

All just business:

Robie looked at Reel. "Nice shooting." 

"From what, twenty yards? The day comes I can't make that shot ten times out of ten, then just shoot me." 

She walked off, leaving Robie alone in the middle of downtown Grand. (107)

Boss Cassidy presses them:

"You both know how much is riding on this. Blue Man is indispensable to the operation of this Agency. The world is more full of threats right now than I've ever seen it. And every day we get new threats coming in. There is something building that I don't like. And if enemies of this country have him and are trying to extract information from him, well, I don't have to tell you how catastrophic that could be." 

Robie said, "We think his disappearance is tied to something local, not some grand plan by the Russians or Iranians to kidnap him. So I'm not sure we have to worry about someone interrogating him for secrets." 

"I don't have the luxury of assuming that, and neither do you," the DCI snapped back. 

"We're trying to approach this logically," pointed out Reel. And if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck. So what we have is Blue Man found out about some prisoners, started asking questions, and then he disappeared. I'm not an experienced investigator, but it doesn't take a Sherlock Holmes to see a possible connection here." 

"Just find him," ordered Cassidy. The screen went dead. (148)

Guilt and blame:

"We're on a mission, Robie," she said tersely. "And you just broke a cardinal rule." 

"And can you point to anything that I've done or haven't done to prove that I'm not doing my job to the best of my abilities? Because I can point to at least one time where you screwed up and almost got us killed." 

She seemed taken aback by this. "I ... I don't know what you're talking about." 

"You froze. When Dolph's boys were bearing down on us, you froze." 

She looked away, her distress evident on her features. 

"I know what that's like, Jess. I froze in the middle of a mission too. Right in the middle of a damn shot. I put someone in the crosshairs who was simply not there. He was in my head, but he wasn't in the line of my shot. And I screwed up." 

She looked back at him. "You can't compare the two," she said dully. 

"I am comparing the two." 

"No, I mean mine was much worse." 

Now Robie looked taken aback. (259)