Heyer, Georgette

 I usually find Georgette Heyer's mysteries fun to read, but Footsteps In The Dark is a bit too Gothic for my taste.  Siblings Peter, Margaret and Celia and Celia's husband Charles have inherited a large old country house, a former priory, said to be haunted by a mysterious monk.  Peter, Margaret and Charles pursue various suspicious characters through their grounds and the local village, while Celia clings timorously to her aunt.  I'll probably put this one in the donation bin, too.  Grade:  C.  

Businessman Arnold Vereker has been found sitting in the stocks on the village green where he keeps a cottage for amorous weekends, dead from a knife wound in the back in Death In The Stocks.  The local police immediately suspect his half-sister Antonia when they find her staying in the cottage with blood on her skirt, but soon find out that several other people also have it in for Arnold, with Antonia's brother Kenneth, an artist and the next heir, leading the pack.  It's up to Superintendent Hannasyde and Sergeant Hemingway to sort it all out.  This book has long been one of my favorites, largely because of the eccentric and unpredictable Vereker clan.  Example:  Superintendent Hannasyde, on viewing one of Kenneth's paintings, remarks to Antonia Vereker, "Your brother told me to-day that his hands are worth more than all your half-brother's money," to which Antonia replies, "Yes, he does think a lot of himself... you'll have to get used to that sort of swank if you mean to see much of him."  Priceless.  Grade:  A.

Barrister Frank Amberley, following the "short cut" recommended by his cousin, comes upon a car on the roadside with a dead body in it.  When the body turns out to be the butler of his uncle's neighbors, Amberley confronts the question:  Why Shoot A Butler?   Grade:  B.  

With the death of domineering Gregory Matthews in Behold, Here's Poison, Superintendent Hannasyde and Sergeant Hemingway again have to deal with an eccentric family, including Gregory's waspish and cheeseparing sister Harriet, uncompromising sister Gertrude, and soulful sister-in-law Zoe, as well as other family members and friends, many of whom had reasons to wish Gregory dead.  When Harriet is also poisoned, the circle narrows.  Grade:  C.  I just found all these people a bit much, and I get tired of Heyer marrying off characters to people they should run from.  

When elderly Silas Kane is found to have fallen over a cliff in They Found Him Dead, only inquisitive fourteen year old Timothy Harte, heavily influenced by American gangster movies, suspects that Silas may have been murdered.  But when Silas' cousin Clement, who has inherited the family business, is found shot to death there's no question of accident, and Hannasyde and Hemingway again have to deal with convoluted family relationships.  This is a good one, mainly because of Timothy's entertainment value.  Grade:  A.  

Affable businessman Ernie Fletcher is found bludgeoned to death in his study with A Blunt Instrument.  The timing of the murder is tight, the blunt instrument is nowhere to be found and Ernie's nephew and heir Neville is busy providing false clues and confusing the matter for his own amusement.  Worse yet, Sergeant Hemingway is saddled with the Bible-spouting constable who discovered the murder.  Grade:  B.  

In No Wind Of Blame, scapegrace Wally Carter, who expects his rich wife to pay for Wally's illegitimate child, is shot and killed in a landscape crawling with potential suspects, including his self-dramatizing step daughter, a Russian prince and a long-time admirer of Wally's wife, Ermentrude.  Former Sergeant, now Inspector Hemingway is baffled not only by the murder but also by the dramatic antics of Wally's step daughter, Vickie.  I give this one an A for the humor alone.   Grade:  A.  

Retired Army General Sir Arthur Billington-Smith bullies his wife and everyone around him, then really blows his top when his poet son Geoffrey brings home an exotic cabaret dancer as his fiancee, so no one is very surprised when Sir Arthur is found stabbed to death in The Unfinished Clue.  I'm giving this one a grade of B mainly because of the wicked humor of it.  Grade:  B.  

Smiling, genial Uncle Joseph Herriard has assembled a Christmas party at his curmudgeonly brother Nathaniel's country house in Envious Casca.  Although Joe tries to spread sweetness and light, Nathaniel quarrels with almost everyone present, from his crusty nephew Stephen, his intense niece Paula, his sly business partner Edgar Mottisfont, and assorted other guests, and the situation seems ripe for murder.  When Nathaniel is discovered stabbed to death in a locked room, it's up to Inspector Hemingway to unlock the puzzle.  Grade:  B.  

Duplicate Death, featuring the return of Timothy Harte, known to Chief Inspector Hemingway as "Terrible Timothy", has long been a favorite of mine.  When Dan Seaton-Carew is strangled to death during a duplicate bridge party given by social climber Mrs. Haddington, and her secretary, the now grown up barrister Timothy's fiancee is among the suspects, Timothy and Hemingway have to sort it out.  Grade:  A.  

When newcomer Sampson Warrenby is found shot to death in his garden, none of the many people who disliked or downright hated the pushy social climber seem to have alibis, but absolutely everyone has a favorite theory of who dunnit, and  Chief Inspector Hemingway has to dodge the amateur detectives "helping" him before he can solve the case in Detection Unlimited.  Grade:  B.  

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.  

Hammett, Dashiell

Dashiell Hammett was a former detective for the Pinkerton Detective Agency, founded in 1850, who turned to writing crime novels and founded the "hard-boiled" school of detective fiction.  His first detective was the Continental Op, an operative for the Continental Detective Agency, who uses many names but never reveals his own name.  A short, fat, balding man, the Op is adept at both smooth talking and violence in a world that seemingly requires much more of the latter than of the former.  I once tried to total the body count in Red Harvest and lost track of the number of violent deaths, as I recall, somewhere in the forties.  Upon re-reading it, I lost count again in the twenties, but that's still a lot of bodies.  

Although the hard-boiled school is often conflated with the noir sub-genre of crime fiction, critics point out that the protagonists in noir are the victims or perpetrators within a corrupt system, whereas the hard-boiled detective "may bend or break the law, this is done by a protagonist with meaningful agency in pursuit of justice."   

The Continental Op, a collection of seven short stories, introduces the Op and his world of crime and violence.  Unlike other writers who denigrate the efforts and efficiency of the police, the Op often works with them to resolve cases for the benefit of his agency and clients.  Grade:  A.  

In Blood Money, published in 1927, criminals from all over the country have gathered in San Francisco to knock over a couple of banks in a well organized attack on San Francisco's financial district.  After the attack, however, many of the hoodlums themselves are killed by their own confederates.  As the Op follows the trail of blood and the body count mounts, the plot keeps getting more and more complicated.  Grade:  B.  

The Big Knockover is a collection of short stories, most of which are too short to be novels, but the story from which the collection takes its name became the first part of Blood Money; the second part of that book details the Op's efforts to trace and collar the planner of the operation.  Grade:  B.

In Red Harvest, the Op is sent by his agency to a Western mining town at the request of the reform-minded publisher of the local newspapers, only to find that his client is murdered before he has a chance even to meet the man.  The Op goes to the publisher's elderly father, the corrupt kingpin of the town, who feels control slipping from his grip, and who reluctantly hires the Op to clean up the town, which he proceeds to do by setting rival factions against each other as the body count mounts.  Grade:  A.  

Who could ever give any grade but an A+ to the quintessential hard-boiled detective story, The Maltese Falcon?   The taut, crisply written story follows Sam Spade's quest from the entry of his lovely, lying client to the final revelation of the falcon itself.  I always enjoy reading this book, and I'm sure I will be reading it again someday, maybe after I finish the remaining eight shelves of books (sigh).   Grade:  A+

I've never been that fond of The Thin Man, who, by the way, is NOT detective Nick Charles, but rather his erstwhile client, Clyde Wynant, a crazy inventor of whom it is said he's so thin he has to stand in the same place twice in order to cast a shadow.  Charles, his wife Nora, and their rambunctious Airedale Asta  are back in New York for the holidays when Charles receives word that Clyde wants to hire him.  Between the cocktail parties and speakeasies of Prohibition era New York, Charles puts away an amazing amount of booze while he chases the elusive Clyde all over town, dodging Clyde's lying, vengeful ex-wife Mimi, her gigolo new husband, and Mimi and Clyde's precociously dissipated daughter Dorothy.  Probably not going to read it again.  Grade:  C.   

And I'm DONE with hard-boiled for a while, on to the legal mysteries of Cyril Hare!