Hastings, Macdonald

 Cork On The Water is Macdonald Hastings' first Montague Cork mystery.  When a salmon fisherman snags a dead body instead of the giant salmon he's been pursuing in a Scottish stream and Cork's insurance company is presented with a claim, Cork proceeds to investigate.  I didn't find either Montague Cork or the mystery especially interesting, so this one will probably go in the donation bin.  Grade:  C.  

Hess, Joan

 Joan Hess lived in Fayetteville, Arkansas and celebrated the region with two mystery series, the Maggody series set in the fictional town of Maggody, Arkansas, and the Claire Molloy series set in Farberville, Arkansas.  

Arly Hanks has returned to her hometown of Maggody, Arkansas, after living in New York City and enduring a painful divorce, to serve as the town's police chief where most of her duties consist of policing the criminal activities of the inbred but not overly bright Buchanon clan.  In Misery Loves Maggody, the only Maggody book I have, Arly's mother Ruby Bee and her best friend Estelle take off on a tour bus following the Elvis trail into Tennessee and Mississippi.  These books were fun to read once, but the "hicks in the sticks" routine gets a bit old after a while; I read most of them years ago, but I'm glad I don't have any more of them.  Grade:  C.  

I also have one book, The Goodbye Body, from another Hess series; Claire Molloy is the owner of a bookshop in Farberville, Arkansas, who has been accidentally involved in several murder cases.  Claire and her daughter are forced to evacuate their home for a couple of weeks while the landlord has it fumigated to get rid of the rats other tenants have attracted, and a friend offers them the use of her house while she's on vacation.  No sooner have they moved into the house when Claire's daughter and her friend find a dead body behind the pool house, although it has disappeared by the time the police arrive.  Soon two young women show up looking for the woman, with whom they claim some sort of vague family relationship.  The plot gets more complicated from there, but unfortunately not any more interesting.  I'm giving this on a C, too, and probably won't keep either one of these books.  Grade:  C.  

Hartman, Honor

Dean James writes a string of mystery series under various pseudonyms, including Honor Hartman and Miranda James, so I'll list them separately under each name.  

In On The Slam, recently widowed Emma Diamond has moved to a Houston subdivision next door to her life-long best friend Sophie.  A beginning bridge player, Emma is invited to a neighborhood bridge party at the home of Janet and Gerald McGreevy; when much-hated Janet drops dead at Emma's feet during the party, Emma goes to work to figure out whodunnit.   These people play a LOT of bridge, although it's not necessary to understand the game to read the book.  This book was a pleasant "cosy", but I don't think I'll ever want to read it again.  Grade:  C

In Unkindest Cut, Emma, Sophie, next-door neighbor Marylou, along with Marylou's friend Paula, go off to the Texas hill country to attend a week-long bridge gathering featuring Paula's former husband, bridge expert Basil Dumont.  When another leading bridge expert, Avery Trowbridge, who happens to be Paula's current husband, unexpectedly turns up, tensions mount and gossip flies faster than the playing cards.  Grade:  C.  

Hare, Cyril

 And we're done with the hard-boiled American stories and back to classic English mysteries, in this case, those of Cyril Hare, pseudonym of Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark, whose mysteries usually have a legal background.  

Two young clerks in a real estate office go to inspect the premises of a house that has been rented for the previous month in Tenant For Death find the strangled body of Lionel Ballentine, an absconding financier.  Since Ballentine had been threatened by failed banker John Fanshaw that same morning, the case seems obvious, except for the fact that Fanshaw cannot be the person who rented the house the month before since he was still in Maidstone Prison until a few days before the murder.  So who is the mysterious Colin James who rented the house and what has become of him; these are the complicated questions Inspector Mallett of Scotland Yard has to answer before he can unravel the mystery.  Grade:  B.  

Death Is No Sportsman finds Inspector Mallett investigating the murder of Sir Peter Packer, the much hated local squire who is found dead on the banks of an exclusive trout fishing stream.  Suspects include Packer's downtrodden young wife, the members of the fly-fishing syndicate who own the fishing rights, and the young laborer whose fiancee Packer has seduced.  Grade: B.

Inspector Mallett is wrapping up his vacation with a stay at Pendlebury Old Hall, a country hotel that was formerly the residence of the Dickinson family.  Over dinner the inspector falls into conversation with Leonard Dickinson, a sadly depressing man who returns annually to visit his birthplace.  When Dickinson is found dead in his bed the next morning, with indications of suicide, Mallett isn't surprised, and resists the efforts of Dickinson's son Stephen, who insists that it can't have been suicide, to drag the inspector into a murder investigation in Suicide Excepted.  Grade:  C.  

Tragedy At Law introduces Francis Pettigrew, a lawyer who follows the Southern Circuit on its rounds, presided over by Pettigrew's judicial nemisis, Sir William Barber.  Pettigrew is present in the judge's car one night when the judge, having had rather too much brandy at dinner,  has the misfortune to hit and injure a pedestrian.  Naturally, complications ensue for Pettigrew and Inspector Mallet to unravel.  Grade:  B.  

With A Bare Bodkin finds Francis Pettigrew pressed into service as the legal advisor to the war-time Pin Control Ministry, evacuated from London to a distant location in the north of England far from the Blitz.  Pettigrew and many of his co-workers are housed in a hotel; when one of the residents is discovered to be the author of several mystery novels, the game is soon afoot to devise The Plot.  The plotters soon settle on Miss Danville as the most unlikely of murderers, at least in part because of her inoffensiveness and her obvious mental instability.  When Miss Danville herself is actually murdered, Pettigrew and Inspector Mallett have to unravel the plot within The Plot.  Grade:  A.  

Now married and settled in rural England, Francis Pettigrew is drawn into the affairs of the local musical society; although he himself is not musical, his wife plays violin in the local orchestra in When The Wind Blows.  When the visiting soloist is found murdered during their first concert, Pettigrew and the local police must track down a mysterious vanishing clarinetist.  Grade:  B.  

Francis Pettigrew is called upon to sit in for an ailing judge on the local bench and hears several local cases of interest, including that of a poor widow, Mrs. Pink, whose landlord is trying to evict her.  When Mrs. Pink is found murdered in Death Walks In The Woods, it appears she may not have been what she seemed to be and suspects abound.  Grade:  B.

Untimely Death (alternate title:  He Should Have Died Hereafter) finds the Pettigrews vacationing in Exmoor, where Frank spent some of his childhood.  One of his memories from those days, when he stumbled upon a dead body, has haunted him for years.  That memory comes flooding back when he also encounters a dead body in the same location as the one from all those years ago, but this body promptly disappears when he goes to seek help, only to reappear several days later.  Subsequently, Frank finds himself in the unaccustomed position of appearing as a witness in the Court of Chancery in the case of a contested will.  The description of the trial includes one of my all time favorite scenes, and for that alone I give this an A.  Grade:  A.