Library Limelights 250

 

Wow, me: 250 posts since 2011.

That’s over 700 books in ten years.

A good dent in an endless list – favourite authors, new authors, dead authors, detectives-crimes-espionage-courtroom trials-mysteries – the inventiveness is boggling.

Just keep them a-coming. Thanks to the creators.

Elizabeth Peters. Crocodile on the Sandbank. 1975. USA: Grand Central Publishing/Hachette, 2013.

Gifts! Adventures with Amelia Peabody, amateur archaeologist and Egyptophile. A vintage “cosy” with a North African slant is the first in a series. As a single woman of her 1880s time, the supremely confident Amelia Peabody is wealthy enough to travel wherever she likes; that is, with a requisite maid and companion, who both fade away in the Cairo heat. But Amelia fortuitously rescues a distressed young woman, Evelyn Forbes, who agrees to sail with her up the Nile. Amelia is not put off by Evelyn’s pathetic story and the unexpected appearances of her rejected suitors—the faithless Italian lover, Alberto, and her arrogant cousin Lucas. Before they leave the city, they meet the Emerson brothers, Egyptologists on their way to excavate some tombs. Walter is immediately smitten with Evelyn, which seems mutual, but the older, obnoxious Radcliffe deliberately riles Amelia at every turn. Since Amelia is narrating, she refers to him merely as Emerson.

They meet again upriver at Amarna, the abandoned city of Pharaoh Khuenaten (Akhenaten). The women temporarily stop at the two brothers’ camp; Emerson needs some medical attention that Amelia can provide. Both women succumb to the magical discovery of ancient artifacts in the desert sands and caves. Amelia and Emerson almost enjoy their continually biting but articulate repartee. Should we be surprised that cousin Lucas shows up? Or a nocturnal, howling, perambulating mummy? The tale is a mystery, after all; who is trying to scare them off? Fascinating are the scenes familiar to me, as they were one hundred and forty years ago! Author Peters has perfectly captured Victorian sensibilities—plucky heroine, dragomen, smelling salts and all―integrating historical context with ease. A more gentle fare than my usual detective preferences, but still, containing well-defined characters and some good dialogue sting.

One-liners

▪ Evelyn and I had already had cause to be horrified at the way these people allow insects to infest the eyes of the children; I had seen pitiful infants so beset by flies that they looked as if they were wearing black goggles. (51-2)

▪ “They are ignorant people,” he said, after a time. “They fear many things.” (145)

▪ “I cannot marry the man I love; but I will never be the bride of another.” (195)

▪ I am afraid I displayed some part of my limbs as I crawled out onto the deck, but I was past worrying about that, and the crewmen were in no condition to notice my lack of dignity. (256)

▪ “Then Peabody had better retire to her bed; she is clearly in need of recuperative sleep; she has not made a sarcastic remark for fully ten minutes.” (275)

Multi-liners

▪ My plans had gone awry. I am not accustomed to having my plans go awry. (1)

▪ “I have met your kind too often—the rampageous British female at her clumsiest and most arrogant. Ye gods! The breed covers the earth like mosquitoes, and is as maddening.” (44)

▪ He might marry her and then spend the rest of his life nobly forgiving her. Nothing can be more infuriating than being forgiven over and over again. (67)

▪ But that was Evelyn’s weakness. She was too kind, and too truthful. Both, I have found, are inconvenient character traits. (88)

▪ The painting was no longer there. Only a broad expanse of broken shards covered the sand. The destruction had been vicious; some sections had been ground into powder. (172)

▪ Carried on by the impetus of his leap, Walter flung himself at the menace just as Lucas fired for the third time. And this time his bullet found a vulnerable target. (224)

▪ Lively terror had replaced my paralysis; every nerve in my body shook with the desire for action. I wanted to scream aloud, to fling myself from the deadly couch. (277)

The souks

The bazaars were a source of constant amusement; the procession of people passing through the narrow passages would have been entertainment enough, without the fascination of the wares on display. Each trade occupies a section of its own: saddlers, slipper makers, copper and bronze workers, carpet sellers, and vendors of tobacco and sweetmeats. There are no real shops, only tiny cupboards, open at the front, with a stone platform or mastaba, on which the merchants sit cross-legged, awaiting customers. (35)

The erstwhile suitor

“How dare you come here after writing that abominable message to her, after taking all her possessions—”

“Message?” Alberto rolled his eyes. “I leave no message. Going out, to seek employment, so I buy food for my beloved, I was strike by a horse while I cross the street. Weeks I lie in the terrible hospital, in delirious, crying out for my Evelyn. When I recover, I stagger to the room which was my paradise. But she is gone! My angel has flown away. I leave no message! If there is message my enemy must leave it. I have many enemy. Many who hate me, who try to steal my happiness, who envy me my angel.”

He looked meaningfully at me.

I have rarely seen such an unconvincing dramatic performance. (61)

Gender issue:

“What an archaeologist you would make, Amelia!”

“Hmmm,” I said. “That is true. It is most unfortunate that I was not born a man. Emerson would accept me then as a colleague; my money would support his work; what a splendid time we would have, working and quarreling together. Oh, it is a pity that I am a woman. Emerson would agree.”

“I am not so sure,” said Evelyn. There was a faint smile on her lips. (196-7)

Halley Sutton. The Lady Upstairs. Ebook download from TPL. USA: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2020.

This is a pressure cooker of a novel right from the get-go. Revenge on men who abuse women sounds like a promising crime theme—revenge for being misled, used, hurt, dumped. Make him pay—that’s how our narrator Jo in L.A. convinces young women to work for her, by first contriving payback for them. Yet this scheme gets nastier: blackmailing wealthy targets with sexually compromising photos. The strangers, often with their own misogynistic history, are chosen by the boss Jo has never met, the Lady Upstairs. It’s up to Jo to arrange for her “girl” to seduce the man, provide a hotel room with secret cameras, confront the victim, and then collect the payoff—for a small share of the proceeds. Jo is deep in debt to the Lady for reasons unknown, deep in stress to pay it off. Her current sting revolves around Ellen and a well-known Hollywood producer. But not only is Ellen becoming fractious about this unpleasant “job,” Jo’s photographer boyfriend failed to show up at the critical assignation; therefore no photos, no hush money, no repayment to the Lady, unless a new tryst can be set up fast.

It gets worse. Jo ends up with two dead bodies on her hands. The only person who knows about it is her best friend Lou, the Lady’s go-between for money and messages. Jo and glamourous Lou are possibly in love with each other, but Lou will never divulge the Lady’s identity. The complications of this degenerate life pile on faster and faster; Jo sees no escape unless she can expose the Lady. Self-medicating with alcohol attains Olympic proportions. The police are looking for their monthly payoff (which Jo gave to Ellen as a bribe for staying the course); they could easily pin a murder on her. Despite her failings, Jo is a fascinating character. Sutton is totally in command of this sleazy but fascinating human train wreck.

Bits & Pieces

▪ I remembered that she was trying to make it as an actress in this town. Well, who wasn’t. (50)

▪ There was magic in our work when the pieces started to drop into place. (93)

▪ Like Ellen, I used to be a little piggy, oinking for love. There was a man, the usual kind: tall, handsome, terrible. (103)

▪ It was a three-act play, she told me, except we were the playwrights and the director and even our own audience. (113)

▪ Freshly dead, he looked like a mannequin, waxy and unreal. The back of his ruined head lolled off the side of a pillow. (153)

▪ “I sure hope everything’s all right.” My voice came out thick and froggy. If you pressed on my skin you’d find a small reservoir of gin underneath. (199)

▪ I wished I could unzip my own skin, get out of Jo for a moment. (224)

▪ “There’s no justice in the world,” he said. “There might as well be friendship. I can help you. I can get you out. Think about it.” (247)

▪ It wasn’t kind, what we were doing, it might not have even been right, but it wasn’t evil. Not then. (347)

▪ Maybe she’d thought she was building a sisterhood, a place for women to take back power using the weapons men haven’t learned how to defend against. (348)

Paula McLain. When the Stars Go Dark. Ebook download from TPL. Toronto: Bond Street Books / Penguin Random House Canada, 2021.

Detective Anna Hart is a driven policewoman, excellent at her job, but driven to the detriment of her family life. Finding and rescuing children – whether runaways or abused – is her motivation and specialty. Survivor of a broken family and foster care herself, she’s developed acute psychological skills in addition to her natural empathy. But her husband Brendan says time out—Anna’s total absorption with her work resulted in their own recent child tragedy. In a state of grief and shock, Anna returns to Mendocino, her one happy childhood place; maybe there she can make sense of her obsessive behaviour and guilty loss. Instead, old friend Will, now the sheriff, draws her into the hunt for missing teenager Cameron Curtis: Did she run away or was she abducted? Another girl, Shannan, had earlier disappeared in the same region.

Anna meets members and friends of the anxious families, brainstorms with Will, and hikes into the extensive surrounding forests as she used to do with Hap, her beloved foster father. But she believes in learning everything about the missing person or the victim, that personal behaviour can attract a predator whose profile the police can then initiate. Shannan’s body is located in her burnt-out car, making the search for Cameron even more urgent because the two cases seem linked. ‘Death and the maiden’ is a theme barely explored. Of all people, it’s a psychic who helps Anna understand, and face up to, her own relationships. Packed with insights, McLain gives us a very thoughtful look into early childhood feelings that last a lifetime.

Samples

▪ Being here makes me feel closer to him, that much closer to the answers I’ve come for, the way I might put myself back together like a scattered, shattered jigsaw puzzle. (45)

▪ Cameron could be struggling with classic adoption issues, testing her parents’ love by acting out. Or she could have layers of emotional scar tissue, identity or attachment issues, or self-destructive tendencies. (58-9)

▪ “And then there’s the older trauma you haven’t really come to terms with. No one’s bulletproof. Asking for help doesn’t mean you’re weak.” (77)

▪ “It’s not what you carry, it’s how you can learn to carry it.” (78)

▪ No matter how resilient children can be, or how wanted, loved, and nurtured they are by their new parents, the original wounds of abandonment and rejection aren’t just magically healed. (98)

▪ I’d had too many mothers, and not enough mothering. (207)

▪ Will’s face remained flat and expressionless. “Did you interview this guy or run a group therapy session?” (265)

▪ Taking them means he finally has some control over the story, over how life has shortchanged him. One victim at a time, he can overthrow the helplessness he felt as a boy, and exert a sense of power. (412)

The psychic

▪ She was simply at the receiving end of an image, a flash of telegraphed panic, as if her unconscious was a kind of cosmic phone line. (172)

▪ “I don’t believe forgiveness is something we have to kill ourselves trying to earn. It’s already here, all around us, like rain. We just have to let it in.” (355)

▪ “Anyone can change. We do it over and over, every time we do even one thing different.” (430)