Marian Babson

It was with great delight that I finally finished off the books by authors whose names start with A and realized that the first of the B authors was Marian Babson.  It's been years since I've read any of the five titles of hers in my library, but that's mainly because they were all on the top shelf and it seemed like too much work to climb up and retrieve them.  My loss, I know, as I discovered when I started the first one, A Fool For Murder, couldn't stop reading it and finished it in one night. 

Some of her books are stand-alones, not part of a series of continuing characters.  I realized I had read the first three books out of the order of publication, but since they're not part of a series, that really doesn't matter.  

In A Fool For Murder, retired economics professor Wilmer Creighleigh writes a popular economics book, A Fool And His Money, that hits best-seller lists in both the UK and USA.  As his assorted relatives and friends gather to celebrate his triumphal return from an international book tour, murder strikes.  Grade:  A.  

Caterer Jean Ainsley, her brother Nick and his wife Mona have started taking culinary students as apprentices to supplement their executive boardroom catering business.  Their worst fear is that someone will contract food poisoning with their sandwiches and canapés as literal Death Warmed Up.  Grade:  A.

The staff of a struggling British newspaper is dying of "accidents" as the deputy managing editor tries to keep the newspaper afloat while he deals with the suspicion that he has sent these reporters to their deaths because someone is Dangerous to Know.  Grade:  A.

Reel Murder introduces aging actresses Evangeline Sinclair and Trixie Dolan and their assorted friends and frenemies.  Someone seems to be recreating scenes from Evangeline's old movies with murderous results.  Grade:  B.  

In The Cat Who Wasn't a Dog, Trixie rescues Cho Cho San, a rare Japanese Bobtail cat, from death in a taxidermist's shop only to find herself, Cho Cho, Evangeline and Dame Cecile Savoy, another aging stalwart of the British stage and screen, enmeshed in intrigue and murder.  Grade:  A.  

Isaac Asimov

Who knew that, in addition to his excellent science fiction novels, Isaac Asimov wrote mystery stories, too?   His Tales of the Black Widowers and the Casebook of the Black Widowers are collections of the short mysteries he wrote, mainly for Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.

The Black Widowers, an exclusively men's dinner club, gather once a month for dinner and conversation, attended to by their faithful waiter, Henry.  For each month's gathering, one member is supposed to bring a guest, who is then grilled by the other members about some problem or puzzle the guest presents.  

The stories and puzzles are interesting and entertaining, although the solutions proposed by the club members are often pretty convoluted and ultimately fall apart under the simple logic applied by Henry.

Grade:  B.

And that's the end of the collection of books by authors whose names start with A.

Ellery Adams

My heart sank when I noticed a stack of Ellery Adams' books; I had put them aside a couple of years ago to consider getting rid of them, but had not gotten around to it.  

I initially liked Adams' Books By the Bay series quite a lot; the central character, Olivia Limoges, is engaging, the members of her writing group are interesting, and the plots are reasonably well done.  However, as the series went on, the author began killing off some established characters, a practice I very much dislike.  I feel that if I'm going to invest any of my psychic energy into liking a character, that person had damn better well stay around and behave him or herself.  That's not to say that characters can't grow or change, or that secrets from the past don't cast long shadows into the present.  I'm in favor of all of that, but if characters are going to change their behavior radically, there had better be indications of it early on.  Again, I think this is a matter of fair play to the reader, because we tend to automatically eliminate from suspicion established characters unless there are legitimate reasons to suspect them.  

However, having said that, the author does a very nice job of developing the characters, especially Olivia Limoges as she discovers her convoluted parentage.   Now I'm glad that I decided to re-read all of the books instead of just letting them go. 

 The Books By The Bay series:

A Killer Plot--2010.  Introduces the central character, Olivia Limoges, an heiress with a troubled childhood and an aversion to commitment in relationships.  This book also introduces the members of her writing group and some of the residents of her small coastal North Carolina town.  The plot of this book hangs together well and the writing is good and moves right along.  Grade:  B.  

A Deadly Cliche--2011.  The book writers club helps the police chief decipher clues left at the scenes of several burglaries and two murders.  Laurel, a member of the club, is attacked.  Olivia finds her long-lost father, supposedly drowned thirty years ago.  Grade:  B

The Last Word--2011.  A famous author, writing a book about an escape of prisoners of war from a North Carolina POW camp sixty years before, is murdered.  Grade: B

Written In Stone--2012.  A local witch summons Olivia to her home in the swamp and hints that Willie Wade might not be Olivia's father after all.  During a regional food festival featuring members of a local Native American tribe, Olivia's sous chef is murdered.    Grade: B

Poisoned Prose--2013.  A regional storytellers' convention is held in town.  One of the storytellers is murdered, and the roots of the crime reach into the past as several people hunt for the treasure she supposedly possessed.   Grade:  B.

Lethal Letters--2014.  Olivia is present when a time capsule from 1910 is discovered in a local church.  Shortly thereafter a box from the capsule goes missing, and once again, the key to the mystery is found in the past.  Grade B.  

Writing All The Wrongs--2015.  At a coastal Carolina history conference held on an island very similar to Bald Head Island, a guest is murdered and an old friend of Olivia's is suspected of having killed her.  Grade:  B.    

Killer Characters--2017.  Olivia's friend Laurel catches her husband in bed with his mother's hospice nurse.  The nurse is subsequently killed and Laurel is suspected of murder. Grade:  C.

    I gave most of the books in this series a B.  They are well written and the characters are well developed, but I suspect that I will never read them again.  I get very tired of series that are set in one small town where, after a few books, half the town is in jail for having killed off the other half.  I also dislike cozy "Jep" or jeopardy plots, where a friend or family member of the central character is arrested or wrongly suspected of having killed the victim and is thus in jeopardy on fairly flimsy evidence.  It's an easy plot device, but it's a pretty tired one by now.    And, note to authors of "cozy" mystery novels--learn at least a little bit about how police forces actually investigate homicide cases and how the legal system works.  

The Book Retreat series:

Murder in the Mystery Suite, 2014.  The Book Retreat series is located in a resort dedicated to book lovers.  The first book in this series, Murder in the Mystery Suite, introduces the characters and the setting, a resort hotel or retreat center that has been taken apart, stone by stone and shipped from England to the Virginia countryside and comes complete with mysterious passageways, a dedicated staff and a secret library containing some of the world's rarest books.  As if this were not already enough to strain credulity, the central character manages to slap together in one day a week long retreat for lovers of mystery novels, during which a rare book disappears and a guest is murdered.  Seriously?  A secret society dedicated to protecting "knowledge" by keeping rare books hidden away from the entire world?  To me, that is withholding knowledge, not protecting or promoting it.  The premise of this series is just too silly to continue reading it.   I don't have any more of these, although I believe I have read at least one other of them.  Definitely not buying any more.  Grade:  C.