Whose Body

by  Dorothy Sayers

This is the first book by this author about her amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey.  Peter is a man of means who likes to try his hand at solving crimes.  The book was originally published in 1923, there is a great deal of class snobbery and anti semitism in it.

Wamsey has an acquaintance in the police force that he enjoys working with.  There is another police official who does not appreciate him getting involved in cases.

There are two cases that pop up about the same time, one a wealthy financier apparently vanishes from his bedroom.  In the other case a naked corpse, wearing only a monical is found in the bathtub of a London architect.

The police arrest the architect who denies all knowledge of the yet to be identified man.

It is Peter Wimsey who eventually figures out that the culprit in both crimes is a local doctor.  The doctor had a grudge against the financier, and killed him, dressing up as the man and pretending to come home, only to be discovered absent the next day.

The dead man in the tub is a corpse donated to the hospital for medical teaching purposes.  The doctor put the financier in the coffin intended for the donated corpse and crawled along the roofs of buildings to dispose of the donated corpse.  He took advantage of an open window in the architect's house to dispose of the building. However he shaved the corpse and fixed him up so he would appear to be a gentleman and not a worker.  Wimsey had noticed that the man's hands made it appear that he was a labourer.

It was an interesting story but I prefer mysteries where there is a bit more description of setting and character development.  As early mysteries go I think Agatha Christie's are much better written.

Miss Benson's Beetle

 by Rachel Joyce

This was an entertaining tale.  It is about a spinster school teacher.  One day when she is trying to teach she finds the students circulating an unflattering drawing of her.  She has had enough.  She leaves the classroom and goes into the staff room.  She then steals her Principal's hiking boots and leaves the building.

As a child she had had a book about animals and was intrigued by one particular gold beetle that is supposed to exist in Madagascar.  When she got older she was befriended by an older man at at museum who showed her various animals, showed her how to collect insects and mount them.

She decides that she has to do something useful in her life, something which will show people that she is not a waste.  She decides to head to New Caledonia, an island off Australa, to search for the gold beetle.  She applies for funding from a scientific society but is turned down.  She puts and ad in the paper for a companion for her trip.  One man comes, a war vet, she feels he is damaged mentally and physically and is not suitable.  A young woman seems suitable but she backs out at the last minute.  The third applicant was rejected because she was basically illiterate.  But finally Miss Benson is desperate for a companion and invites the second woman to meet her at the train.

The young woman does make it to the train but she does not impress Miss Benson.  She is dressed in a pink suit and does not have suitable attire for the adventure.  However the young woman Enid Pretty proves indispensable in getting them and their luggage on the train and then onto the ship.  Enid also nurses Miss Benson who is very seasick at the start of the voyage.  Miss Benson does not approve of Enid cavorting with men on the ship.  Enid has used her femininity to get around not having a passport. 

Enid tells Miss Benson that she is pregnant but her husband has died.  On the ship she fears she has lost the baby.  She really wants to be a mother. When they finally reach Australia Enid tells Miss Benson that she is going to stay with a man she met on the ship.  Enid and her man friend end up in an immigration camp.

While Miss Benson is trying to get approval and visas for her, she meets the British consul and his wife.  They are not able to help her with her approvals.  She is dismayed that all her scientific equipment has gone missing on the trip from Australia.  She goes to the camp and tries to convince Edid to join her again.  Enid is hesitant/afraid to the leave the man.

Eventually Enid does join her.  She manages to get scientific equipment needed and a jeep (she has stolen these) and they set off for a house in the forest to conduct their research.

While all this is going on two other things are happening.  British police are seeking a young woman who supposedly murdered her husband.  This woman was spotted at the rail station along with an unknown woman.  Police around the world are looking for these women.

Also, the ex-soldier that Miss Benson rejected is outraged that she did not select him and he sneaks aboard ships to get to join her.

Once the ladies are set up they work very hard to fix up their basecamp and fight off mosquitos and heat to climb the mountain looking for the orchids which they hope will lead them to the beetles.  Eventually they both come to realize that they are best friends.

Enid eventually tells Miss Benson that she is being sought by the police.  The soldier catches up with them.  Enid has her baby.  The soldier kills Enid and he himself dies.  Enid is left to raise Enid's daughter.  The British official's wife figures out who the two women are and tries to tell the police and media about them but by then interest in the story has waned.

As the years go by a museum in England periodically receives journals and samples of various bugs.  One young woman after seeing one of the these packages decides she is going to go out and be a naturalist.

This was a cute story.  Obviously there was some criminal behaviour but the development of the friendship between the two women was developed in an interesting way.  The ending was a fitting denoument to the book.

Sharks in the Time of Saviors

 by Kawai Strong Washburn

This is the story of a very poor Hawaiian Family with children. One of the children is conceived in the back of a vehicle on a beach, while spirits are walking up in the hills.

When the boy is about five the family go on a tour boat outing.  Somehow the little boy Noa falls into the water and is soon surrounded by sharks.  Everyone fears the worst but instead of killing him the sharks surround him and bring him to the boat.  After that it seems that the boy has special healing powers and people flock to his home to get healed.  This healing takes a physical and mental toll on the boy but his parents make some extra income from it so he gets special treatment from them.  Then one day a man with Parkinson returns to the house complaining he was not cured.  The boy stops treating people.

The boys sister and brother are jealous that he is their parent's favourite.  The boy is an ace at school and seems to be destined for Stanford.  His brother is very good at basketball and resents that he doesn't get any attention.  He feels if he gets a successful career in basketball he will bring more money to his parents than his brother has ever done.  The sister too feels neglected.

The story jumps forward in time, the young boy is now a paramedic in Seattle.  What happened, why didn't he become a doctor if he was so smart?  This is never explained.  He does practice his healing ways as a paramedic. His partner wants to know what he is doing....  Then one day a pregnant woman is injured in a car crash and Noa is not able to save her.  He is devastated by this and ends up leaving his job and returning to Hawaii to find himself.

At the same time, his brother got a basketball scholarship and became famous, his parents were finally paying attention to him now that the media and locals were praising him.  The brother's grades decline and he is eventually kicked out of school and starts a delivery job.

The daughter is in San Diego studying engineering and getting good grades but she is also doing drugs and doing dangerous climbing activities every chance she gets.  She is part of a group of 4 people that are very close but her relationship with the other girl in the group deteriorates when the daughter makes lesbian overtures to the girl.

When Noa is back in Hawaii he leaves to go into the wilderness to find himself.  When he doesn't return people start searching for him but cannot locate him.  His brother eventually returns to Hawaii to search for his brother.  He is the one who finds evidence that Noa was killed in a landslide.  The death of Noa puts the father into a catatonic state.  The mother struggles to look after her husband and make enough money to survive.

The brother returns to the states with the sister to clear out Noa's rental accommodation.  They have a confrontation with police and a removal company.  The sister ends up stealing a car to get away from the police but the brother ejects her from the car and tells the police he did it to protect his sister.  He goes to jail where he develops a prosperous business supplying things to other prisoners, with the cooperation of one of the guards.  He starts sending money to his family from his profits.   Even after he is out of jail he keeps working at an illegal business.   The parents don't like to think about where the money has come from but are glad to have it.

The daughter eventually returns to Hawaii, abandoning her university studies.  She starts working for free for a man that is developing an ecologically progressive farm.  She is using some of her engineering knowledge to help him develop his farm hoping eventually to get some money out of her work.

The family go to visit her at the farm, the father seems to come out of his stupor at least temporarily.

The book implies that Noa might be challenging the old gods of Hawaii and might have the power to help heal the islands, but instead of doing this he is killed.  At the end of the book it looks like the sister and father might also somehow have a connection to the islands and maybe they will do alright.

The novel was very powerfully written, the struggles of the characters, the tension between the parents and the siblings was honest and powerful.  The impact of expectations, or lack thereof, of people was brilliantly portrayed.  I just feel a couple things were not explained.... why didn't Noa become a doctor and why did he have to die?

Overall, I was really impressed with the book and engaged with the story.

 New York Times Review:

In this novel, the only way out is back. After Noa’s overconfidence in his gifts leads to a disaster at his job, he returns to Hawaii and goes on a quest to understand both himself and the ancestral land that is a part of him. His expedition will come at a hefty price for him and his loved ones — incarceration, mental illness, unemployment — but isn’t that the point of a journey to our roots? So we may walk through fire, and so be purified?

Perhaps a day will come when humans will no longer need to make exorbitant sacrifices in order to see the light of their true selves. Until then, Washburn has given us a meditation on the tragedies of living too long in the darkness.

 

Mexican Gothic

 by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

This book has been on many recommended lists but it was listed as a horror book so I was a bit leery as I don't like gore.  Fortunately it was what I would call a gothic horror, light on violence.  I was surprised when I saw it is written by a BC author.

The story takes place in Mexico.  A girl's father receives a strange letter from a niece who recently married.  She sounds distraught and a bit weird.  The man sends his daughter up to a remote mine site in northern Mexico where the woman is living with her husband and his family.  The mine is out of business.  The house is in disrepair and the young woman is told many rules about being quiet, not talking, not opening windows.  

She is shocked when she sees how weak and confused her cousin is, the cousin still implies she is in danger.  The family daughter tells the girl her cousin has consumption. The cousin asks the girl to go into town and get a bottle of something special from a herbalist.  The girl does that but when she give the medicine to her cousin she drinks more than the prescribed amount and goes into seizures.  The family are furious when they found out that the young girl did this.

While all this is happening the young girl has strange dreams, she seems to see mould moving around n the wall paper.  She is befriended by a young man of the family.  The young woman hopes to escape the house, with her cousin, with the assistance of the young man, but eventually he tells her that she and her cousin will never be able to leave.  The house has them entrapped.

The girl later finds out that a strange fungus lives under the house and seems to have invaded the house. The mine failed because many workers died from it.  She also learns that the patriarch of the family has actually lived several lives by transporting his consciousness into other members of the family.  He has fathered children with several of his female relatives to keep creating bodies into which he can transmigrate.  He plans to use the young girl as breeding stock.  We find out that the family doctor is in on the strange things that have been going on.

However, with the help of the young man she and her cousin are able to escape and the house gets set on fire and is destroyed.

It was an interesting read, scary but not terrifying.

Hotel Pastis

 by Peter Mayle

This book is about a recently divorced ad executive in England who is making lots of money but who is dissatisfied with his life.  He take a vacation for the first time in years and falls in love with a little town in province and a woman he meets there.  He decides to ditch his corporate life and pour money into turning an old gendarmerie building in the Provence village into a boutique hotel.

The story involves intrigues within his company, the man seems to be approached/threatened by a Marseilles "mafia type".

As the hotel is being built and successfully launched there is a robbery being planned by some local criminals.  They plan to rob the local bank on Bastille Day while all the celebrations are distracting people.  The mastermind of the theft gets a team of thieves and has them training to ride bicycles for over a year to get in shape so they can leave the robbery dressed as bike riders.  I can't believe a bunch of criminals would be willing to do this.  The robbery is successful but they are shocked to find that as they leave town an additional rider has joined them on their ride.  He is a young American who has come to France for a year.  He is the son of a client of the main character.  When the rider's find out who he is they add to their "winnings" by kidnapping him and getting $2 million more francs for him.  The thieves buy fake passports and leave the country on a coach bus.

The main character helps to get the young man released.  As this is all going on he realizes he isn't all that busy as a hotel owner and isn't really feeling fulfilled in the role.  The son of the kidnapped boy offers him a consulting job with his company and the man accepts.

As I read reviews of this book I found some people loved it but many were lukewarm or even "dissatisfied".  One person wrote they were disappointed with the ending... no resolution of the lives of most of the characters.  I agree.  Another complained they didn't enjoy the excesses of the rich.  I also agree. 

It was a light read but not a book I would necessarily recommend. I was expecting better. Off to the building library the book will go

The Historians

 by Cecilia Ekback

The book takes place in 1943 in Sweden as the three countries, Denmark, Finland and Sweden are trying to figure out how to deal with/challenge the Germans.  The main character, Laura, is working for the Swedish government in the office of the Chief Negotiator with Germany.  Sweden had supposedly been neutral but is selling coal to German for its factories.

While in university Laura had been part of a small clique of history students who had a special relationship with a professor, they were considered wunderkids.  The prof challenged their ideas.  At one point he assigned them the task of designing a new religion.  This project causes the group to disintegrate.  Laura had kept in touch with one of the group, Britta.

One day Laura sees Britta in a restaurant with a Nazi official.  Around the same time Britta asks to meet with her.  They meet and Laura thinks Britta seems troubled but she doesn't tell her what is bothering her.  Shortly after a friend of Britta's contacts Laura to tell her that Britta has disappeared.  They search for her and eventually find her in a historical society building murdered, after having been tortured. 

Laura decides to recruit her former fellow students to try to figure out why Britta was murdered.  Soon after her apartment is destroyed by a explosion.

In another part of the story a government official receives a copy of Britta's thesis.  Not understanding what it is for he throws it out but notes the table of contents.

Meanwhile in a mining town in Sweden a young Sami girl, a trapper, has disappeared.  Her brother is trying to find her.  People seem to think she died in the woods but he is convinced she is still alive.  Then a local man wanders up the mountain near an area that is supposedly out of bounds and is found dead.  Later the mine Manager is shot.  The book has quite a bit of tension as the various people in the story are not sure who they can trust or what to believe.

It turns out that there is some secretive research on the Sami taking place on the mountain.  Like the Germans it seems some elements of Swedish society are interested in pursuing a pure Nordic race.

Laura is told by her father to leave things to the police after one of her fellow students is murdered but she doesn't take his advice and heads up the mine area.  Eventually the Sami in the mine area work together with the other miners to save the mine Manager and save the Sami being imprisoned on the mountain.  Laura is devastated to learn that her father had involvement in what was going on .

This was a well written book.  I enjoyed it and the twists at the end.

 

Agatha

by Anne Cathrine Bomann

This book is written by a Danish author.  It is about a 70 year old psychiatrist who is counting the days/patient visits until he can retire.  He is totally not interested in his work anymore and doodles in his notebook while his patients drone on.  He just lets them talk and makes no effort to direct or assist them.

He has a receptionist who runs his office very efficiently.  He is very formal with his interactions with her.  Then one day a new patient, supposedly with violent tendencies and insists she wants to become a patient.  He doesn't agree as he is shortly to retire.  She keeps coming back and one day his receptionist slips her in for an appointment.  The psychiatrist is not happy with this but agrees to see the woman.

As the new patient comes for her appointments she seems to challenge and intrigue the doctor.  He becomes very curious about her.  She seems very disillusioned/bored with her life.

One day the doctor's receptionist tells him she has to take time off as her husband is terminally ill.  The doctor feels inconvenienced by this.  The receptionist asks him to come and speak to her husband to perhaps provide his some relief.  He is reluctant to do this but eventually does go to meet the man.  He is very unsure of himself, his job is to deal with people about living not dying.

As time goes on the doctor had been counting down the days/patient visits until he can retire.  The office is getting stale smelling as the receptionist has not been coming to work nor is the office being cleaned.

Then one day the doctor is no longer counting the days til he retires.  He is starting to interact more with his patients during their visits The receptionist's husband has died.  She returns to work and realizes that he has changed his mind about retiring.

This was a short book but it was interesting how the new patient was able to re-energize the doctor.  We need some positive stories in these dreary times.