Gallico, Paul

 Paul Gallico's The Zoo Gang consists of four longish stories, too short to be novels, too long to be short stories, but fascinating no matter what you call them.  The central character of each story is Colonel Pierre Roqubrun, an antique dealer on France's Cote d'Azur, playground of the rich and famous as well as the greedy and unscrupulous, and four of his former colleagues in the French Resistance of WWII.  During the war the gang was the scourge of the German occupiers of the Riviera; now they are all respected citizens with their memories of the perilous days at war.    

    In The Picture Thieves, a gang has stolen twelve famous Renoir paintings from a museum in Cannes.  Captain Scoubide, the local police detective, suspects that the Zoo Gang may be involved in this burglary as well as two other recent art thefts in the area.  His questioning leads the Colonel to wonder whether his former colleagues, now all respectable merchants and tradesmen, might indeed be involved, and if they are, how he can extricate them.  

In How To Stick Up A Million Dollar Riviera Gala, a whisper of a planned attack on a glittering society charity gala leads Colonel Roqubrun to ask the Zoo Gang to tell him how they would pull off such a heist; when they come up with a plan, he has the uneasy feeling that they might actually be planning to do it.  

In Snow Over The Cote d'Azur, the death of the Colonel's favorite niece from a heroin overdose leads him to declare war on the drug traffickers of the Riviera, using the special talents of his four WWII Resistance colleagues, although he has to apologize to them for blowing up a chocolate factory on his own that was being used to process drugs.  

Le Double Snatch finds the Colonel narrating the story of a double kidnapping as the final chapter unfolds before his audience.  

These are just great stories.  Grade:  A.  

Frazer, Margaret

•  Margaret Frazer's historical mystery novels featuring Dame Frevisse are set in the priory of St. Frideswide during the complicated reign of King Henry VI of England.  Dame Frevisse is the niece of the powerful and well connected Thomas Chaucer, son of poet Geoffrey Chaucer, the ramifications of whose political dealings sometimes reach into the cloistered walls of the priory. These tales are well written, preserving the manners and flavor of medieval England, but with language accessible to modern readers.   

In The Novice's Tale, saintly novice Thomasine, who is soon to take her vows as a nun, is dismayed when her aunt, hard drinking and brash Lady Ermentrude, descends upon the priory with her entourage, including a pet monkey, and demands that Thomasine leave the priory with her and marry.  When Thomasine resists, Lady Ermentrude flies into a drunken rage and rides off to Thomasine's sister's house, where she berates Lady Isobel and her husband, Sir John.  Shortly after Lady Ermentrude returns to the priory she has a seizure and becomes incoherent.  When both Lady Ermentrude and a servant who has drunk some of her medicated wine die Dame Frevisse realizes she must step in and investigate to keep the Crowner (coroner) from coming to the easy and convenient conclusion that Thomasine has poisoned them both to avoid being removed from the priory.  I found this story accurate in historical detail and believable as a mystery novel.  Grade:  A.  

I read The Servant's Tale years ago, but found it so sad and depressing that I think I'm going to skip it this time around, although as I recall, I found the details of the arrival of a troupe of players at the priory to perform a play to be very interesting.  It was the details of the lives of medieval peasants that got me down.  

In The Maiden's Tale, Dame Frevisse travels to London with Abbot Gilberd to escort the new Prioress to St. Frideswide, but before that can happen, she becomes involved in the political intrigues of Cardinal Beaufort, the Duke of Gloucester, and her own cousin Alice, wife of the earl of Suffolk, as Parliament convenes to consider contracting peace with France, the price of which is the release of the Duc d'Orleans, who has been a prisoner in England since the battle of Agincourt, twenty five years earlier.   This is a cracking good tale, based on a brief historical reference to a cousin of Suffolk, Lady Jane, known as "Jane with the blemish" for a large birthmark on her face, who had the fortitude to refuse to take vows in the convent she had been raised in and forced the world to let her live her own life.  Grade:  A.  

I got a bit bogged down in the complicated plot ramifications of an estate dispute in The Clerk's Tale.  Dame Frevisse and her prioress, Domina Elizabeth, have traveled to St. Mary's nunnery in the village of Goring to visit a cousin of Elizabeth's who is dying.  They arrive to find that Master Montfort, with whom Frevisse has dealt on previous occasions as Crowner, has been murdered in the nunnery garden.  That doesn't come as much surprise as almost everyone hated the greedy, grasping Montfort, who has been playing one side against the other in a legal dispute he has been handling in his new role as Escheator.  Montfort's son Christopher had succeeded him as Crowner and now must investigate his father's murder.  Grade:  B.  

I did not finish The Bastard's Tale, either.  Arteys, the illegitimate son of the Duke of Gloucester, is caught up in the political machinations of the ruthless and powerful men around King Henry VI, and Dame Frevisse must use what influence she has to extricate him from them.  

I gave a couple of these books grades of A, but I'm not sure I'll ever read them again; I love the well researched history, but in many ways the stories are just too intense. 

Link to a chronology of the history depicted in the Dame Frevisse books:  Chronology.  

Link to a chronology of the history depicted in the Dame Frevisse books:  Chronology.