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   This is a cracking good tale, based on a brief historical reference to a cousin of Suffolk, Lady Jane, known as "Jane with the blemish" for a large birthmark on her face, who had the fortitude to refuse to take vows in the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. 

Futrelle, Jaques

American journalist Jaques Futrelle was the creator of the Thinking Machine cases, the most famous of which is "The Problem of Cell 13", republished in 1973 in Best Thinking Machine Cases.  In that story, the Thinking Machine, AKA Professor Augustus S. F. X. van Dusen, a scientist with a string of letters signifying professional degrees after his already impressive name, undertakes to escape from a prison cell by thinking himself out.  Of a slight physical build and an irascible temperament, the Thinking Machine is notable for his irritation with the use of the word "impossible", which leads him to take the bet.  

These stories, and additional one republished in 1976 in Great Cases of the Thinking Machine, were written in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; the author, Jaques Futrelle, died aboard the Titanic in 1912.   Unlike Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Thorndyke, Professor van Dusen makes full use of the technology of the day, especially the telephone, although most of the leg work in the cases is done by reporter Henry Hatch.   I'd have to give "The Problem of Cell 13" an A, but most of the rest of the stories get a grade of B.  I did get rather tired of van Dusen's often repeated dictum of "two and two always make four, not some of the time, but ALL of the time."  

Freeman, R. Austin

 Once again I started these out of chronological order, but oh, well, it's my party and I'll read them in whatever order I want.  

R. Austin Freeman was the creator of Dr. John Thorndyke, who remains preeminent among the scientific forensic detectives.  Thorndyke is both a lawyer and a medical doctor who maintains his own laboratory where he can scientifically test materials and substances found at crime scenes.  

One of Freeman's earlier Thorndyke books, The Eye of Osiris, first published in 1911, finds Dr. Berkeley, a young colleague of Thorndyke's, involved with members of a family reduced to poverty by the bizarre will of an uncle who disappeared under suspicious circumstances two years earlier.  When bones appear on the uncle's property,  Berkeley calls on Thorndyke's legal knowledge as well as his scientific abilities to sort the matter out.  Grade:  A.  

The Stoneware Monkey, first published in 1939, begins with a narrative by Dr. Oldfield, a young doctor who encounters the murder of a police constable while on a temporary assignment in the country.  In addition to the murder, a sizable quantity of diamonds has been stolen that same night.  Later, the doctor becomes friendly with an artist, Peter Gannet, a potter whose primitively constructed pieces appear to sell unaccountably well.  When Gannet disappears under suspicious circumstances, Dr. Oldfield enlists the help of Dr. Thorndyke in determining whether the ashes of human bone discovered in Peter Gannet's pottery kiln are connected with his disappearance.  The hilarious explanation of modern abstract pottery art alone makes this one worth rereading.  Grade:  A.  

The Penrose Mystery, first published in 1936, finds Dr. Thorndyke, Dr. Jervis, and their associate Mr. Polton searching for a wealthy collector of antiquities, Daniel Penrose, who has disappeared shortly after showing a collection of valuable jewels to a lawyer whom he swears to secrecy.  I found the solution of this case to be bewilderingly complicated and improbable.  Grade:  C.  

Dr. Thorndyke's Discovery, published in 1932, with an alternate title of When Rogues Fall Out, is an "inverted" mystery tale, starting with the commission of the crime and then proceeding to follow its detection.  In this case, there are two crimes; first the disappearance of Mr. Didbury Toke, a collector of art objects and fence of stolen jewelry, then second the murder of Scotland Yard Inspector Badger, a zealous but secretive official investigator.  It takes Thorndyke's special skills to connect the two crimes and apprehend the unknown perpetrator.  Grade:  A.  I have to say this was a difficult book for me to read because the copy I have is a cheap paperback with center gutters so narrow you have to guess at some of the words.  This copy cost $.25 when it was printed, and as Mark Twain said of paying $7 for a five hour Wagner opera at Bayreuth, it was almost too much for the money.  

After slogging through approximately a thousand pages of short stories in The Famous Cases of Dr. Thorndyke, I have to confess some sympathy for Father Ronald Knox's Commandment against elaborate scientific plot devices.  For example, when the location of a crime is determined by the presence on the victim's clothing of a rare, almost extinct mollusk found in only two places in Britain, a fact known to Thorndyke, but not to the reader, this reader is inclined to be a bit cranky.  Thorndyke's absolute refusal to reveal any of his thought process during the case to either Dr. Jervis, his usual Watson, or to the reader until the dénouement, in case after case is irritating.  

I finished off the Thorndyke series with The Unconscious Witness.  Landscape artist Tom Pedley is blissfully paining a rural scene one day when he notices three people walking past; two men and a woman who appears to be following and eavesdropping on the two men's conversation.  A short time later the woman and one of the men return up the path separately, but there's no sign of the third man.  Pedley is intrigued by the eavesdropper and makes a sketch of the three figures, then forgets about it until the police come to question him about the murder of the third man.  A short time later a woman who claims to be an artist, but who has neither taste nor talent, moves into the studio next to Pedley's and begins to try to involve him in an intimate friendship.  I found the plot of this one involved so many coincidences that the whole thing was unbelievable, but the commentary on modern art is pretty funny.  Grade:  C.  

Forrest, Katherine V.

 It's been years since I read any of Katherine V. Forrest's Kate Delafield police procedural novels, so I was pleased to see them next on the list.  

In Amateur City, LAPD homicide detective Kate Delafield arrives at the scene of a homicide in the building of the Modern Office corporation, where an overbearing, much hated manager has been stabbed to death.  The early hour of the murder and building security features limit the pool of suspects to the upper level managers, all of whom had reason to hate the victim.  More than just a routine police procedural, the book explores the internal police culture as it affects lesbian and gay police officers.  Grade:  A.  

Investigating Murder At The Nightwood Bar, homicide detective Kate Delafield finds a young lesbian murdered in the bar's parking lot with her own baseball bat.  Although initially suspicious and unhelpful, the bar's lesbian customers warm up to Kate after she fights off an attempted kidnapping of one of the women by a gang of young homophobes.  WARNING:  this book contains descriptions of sexual child abuse.  Grade:  A.  

Someone has killed a resident of The Beverly Mailbu and sat and watched during the three hours it took him to die.  The victim turns out to have been an informer during the dark days of the McCarthy Communist witch hunt era that affected the lives of many people working in the motion picture industry, including some of the other residents of the building.  Grade:  A.

Sleeping Bones entangles Kate in a web of international intrigue when an ancient fossil is found at the scene of a murder at the tar pits of Rancho La Brea.  Is the fossil real or a fake, and who is it that cares so much about it, anyway?  I found the plot of this one a bit more difficult to believe, but it's still an engrossing mystery.  Grade:  B.