Murder in the Queen's Armes, by Aaron Elkins

In this, the third installment in the Gideon Oliver series, Gideon and his new bride, Julia Tendler (whom he had met and fallen in love with in The Dark Place), are on their honeymoon in England. Dorchester, to be precise.



In the prologue, Gideon visits a small museum, the Greater Dorchester Museum of History and Archaeology, to see their famous "Poundbury Man" - a thirty-thousand year old parieto-occipital calvareal fragment. But it has been stolen.

Next, Gideon wants to visit an old friend, Nathan Marcus, an American archaelogist who has riled British archaeologists with his brash manner. He has found a site which he believes will revolutionize the history of stone-age man, but dark deeds are afoot.... is Nate a con-man, or are his rival archaeologists out to get him?

The series
Fellowship of Fear (1982)
The Dark Place (1983)
Murder in the Queen's Armes (1985)
Old Bones (1987)
Curses! (1989)
Icy Clutches (1990)
Make No Bones (1991)
Dead Men's Hearts (1994)
Twenty Blue Devils (1997)
Skeleton Dance (2000)
Good Blood (2004)
Where There's a Will (2005)
Unnatural Selection (2006)
Little Tiny Teeth (2007)
Uneasy Relations (2008)
Skull Duggery (2009)

The Secret Adversary, by Agatha Christie

There are many "firsts" in my life that I don't remember. I have always regretted not keeping a journal from the time I was young, keeping track of the first time I met people, the first time I read this book or saw that movie, first time I got a job, and so on.

There are two firsts that I do remember.

The very first play I ever saw was Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap. I was about 11 years old. It was 1971, and there was a draught in Zambia or some other African country. The cargo firm for which my father worked was hired to fly food from Botswana to Zamia. THe job was to last for at least a year. My dad decided to take advantage of the tax breaks offered to those whose whole families lived overseas for a year, so he took my mom and two siblings with him, and we moved to Johannesburg, South Africa. The flight took us via London, England, and while there, we went to see The Mousetrap. First play, first mystery play, first crush on an actor. (I liked the guy who played Detective Sargeant Trotter.)

In Johannesburg, we rented a furnished house from a couple, and on their bookshelves was The Secret Adversary. I might not have picked it up if I'd never seen The Mousetrap, but I was familiar with the name Agatha Christie, so I did, and loved it. It was the first "grown up" book I ever read, the first "grown up" mystery, and the first book of Agatha Christie's that I ever read.

I have been a fan of Agatha Christie's ever since. Of course, even though there's a special place in my heart for Christie, I am not blind to her faults. And I don't care for the last few books she wrote, they definitely suffer in quality. But when she was in her prime....

Agatha Christie's books can be divided into two main sections - her detective novels, featuring Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple, and her adventure thrillers, featuring, usually, independent heroines or young couples.

The Secret Adversary, published in 1922, was Christie's second book published, after The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which was a detective story featuring Hercule Poirot.

Tommy Beresford served in the Army and was demobbed (demobilized) with few prospects. Tuppence Beresford served as a nurse during the war, and is also at a loose end. They meet accidently, rekindle their friendship, and discuss their difficulties in finding work. They decide to form their own business - Young Adventurers Ltd, and put an ad in the newspaper seeking informaton on someone called Jane Finn. Tuppence had overhead two other people talking about someone with that name, and wondering where she was. So she and Tommy decide to be proactive in what they hope will be their first case.

But they get more than they bargain for. Jane Finn disappeared after the sinking of the Lusitania, entrusted with a treaty that at the time - during WWI - made since, but now if its terms were known could cause another war, but not with Germany, and the British government and various nefarious parties have been searching for her, and that treaty, ever since.

The Secret Adversary is, to put it plainly, just a lot of fun. It's hardly dated at all, for all that' its over 80 years old. Secret treaties with terms that can backfire are certainly plausible, the characters are engaging, and the mystery fast moving. There are of course no computers, no cellphones, no TVs, in that it's a simpler time.

That's another reason why I like to read these early books of Agatha Christie. The author is at the height of her powers, but we also get insights into how people lived (at least, a certain social segment of it) way back in the 1920s.

Christie used the Tommy and Tuppence characters several more times. I also recommend Partners in Crime, which is an anthology of short stories, in which Tommy, with Tuppence's assistance, solves various mysteries using methods of other top detectives of the day (the 1920s day) such as Holmes, Reggie Fortune, the Thinkng Machine, and so on. N or M, which takes place during World War II, is also well done.

After that, the series falls off, in my opinion. Unlike Poiror and Miss Marple, who never age in the 60 years of their existence, Tommy and Tuppence do, and by By the Pricking of My Thumbs (written 20 years after N or M?) they are old, Tuppence is matronly, Albert's (their young, intelligent servant) brains have atrophied (he is now more comic relief than anything) and the fun has rather gone out of the series.

But, they had a good run.

As for purchasing details, the book is still in print and can be purchased via Amazon.com if not in your local bookstore. If Amazon.com is to be believed, you can also get it for free from Kindle.

The Red House Mystery, by A. A. Milne

I've been reading The Red House Mystery . It was published in 1922 by A.A. Milne, one of the very first full-length mystery novels. (Agatha Christie's The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published in 1920.)

Although I'm enjoyed the mystery, truth to tell I'm not sure what age audience it's aimed at. A. A. Milne is most famous as the author of the Winnie-the-Pooh stories, and occasionally in the book the omniscient narrator addresses the reader in a professorial manner (as JRR Tolkien does in The Hobbit, a book for teens, but not in The Lord of the Rings), aimed at adults.

For example:

At about the time when the Major (for whatever reasons) was fluffing his tee-shot at the sixteenth, and Mark and his cousin were at their business at The Red House, an attractive gentleman of the name of Antony Gillingham was handing up his ticket at Woodham Station and asking the way to the village. Having received directions, he left his bag with the station master and walked off leisurely. He is an important person to this story, so that it is as well we should know something about him before letting him loose in it. Let us stop him at the top of the hill on some excuse, and have a good look at him.

The first thing we realize is that he is doing more of the looking than we are. Above a clean-cut, clean shaven face, of the type usually associated with the Navy, he carries a pair of grey eyes which seem to be absorbing every detail of our person.

Mark Ablett is a wealty man who maintains a household in the country, which he allows his cousin to run. He invites people, much less well-off than himself, down to frequent house parties - he is a sponsor of all the arts. On the day when this novel starts, he receives a letter from his ne'er do well younger brother, Robert, who has been living in Australia for decades. He's coming to call.

In due course, Robert does arrive. He goes into the study with Mark, and all is silent for some time. Then there is a shot. Mark's cousin Cayley bangs on the door to the study, while Antony Gillingham, who has come to the house to pay a call on his friend, Mr. Beverly, whom he knows is staying there, sees him from the front door and offers his assistance. When they enter the room, they find the body of Robert on the floor...and Mark nowhere to be found.

Gillingham enlists his friend Beverly as his Watson, and sets out to solve the mystery, with the accommodating help of the policeman on the case.

The Red House Mystery is very much a "tea cosy" mystery, a puzzle (and one that anyone who has read twenty years of Agatha Christie may solve quickly - but remember this book was written very early on in the career of the mystesry novel.)

It's an easy read, it evokes a time long past (as do Christie's early novels), and its fun.

I'm reading it in the Kindle edition (only 99 cents). The formatting is a little off. Sometimes lines in a paragraph are shifted down, an occasional indentation is missing, but these are very, very minor problems.

Nerve, by Dick Francis

The key element of a Dick Francis book is that it will have something to do with horses and horse-racing. His early books featured mostly jockeys and racing, later books dealt with lead characters in other professions, who were only tangentially connected to the horse racing world.

Another element of a Dick Francis novel is that the hero always - always - will be either beaten up or in some way tortured in the last few chapters of the book, to show how tough they are, presumably.

Truth to tell, Nerve isn't one of my favorites, but it is an interesting psychological story. (My favorite Franis is Reflex, the very first one I read, in which the hero is a jockey and also an amateur photographer, the reflex of the title speaking both of a person's reflexes, and also a reflex lens), followed by In the Frameand then Forfeit.

Interestingly, having just checked Wikipedia, it looks like Nerve was Francis' second novel, written in 1964. I was surprised by that - it is very accomplished, for someone's second novel.

Robb Finn is a beginning jockey, just starting out in his career. Things are starting to look up - he's just been offered steady rides by a trainer, James Axminster. He's ecstatic...he's on his way. Then...things start to go wrong. His horses start to give up on him...is he losing his nerve?

This is a novel of psychological suspense...as several jockeys whom Rob knows are also finding their lives in turmoil...losing their jobs, losing their nerve, nad so on... what is going on?

Here are the first few paragraphs of the book:

Art Mathews shot himself, loudly and messily, in the center of the parade ring at Dunstable races.

I was standing only six feet away from him, but he did it so quickly that had it been only six inches I would not have had time to stop him.

He had walked out of the changing room ahead of me, his narrow shoulders hunched inside the khaki jerkin he had put on over his racing colors, and his head down on his chest as if he were deep in thought. I noticed him stumble slightly down the two stepos from the weighing room to the path; and when someone spoke to him on the short walk to the parade ring, he gave absolutely no sign of having heard. But it was just another walk from the weighing room to the parade ring, just another race like a hundred others. There was nothing to suggest that when he had stood talking for two or three minutes with the owner and the trainer of the horse he was due to ride, he would take off his kerkin, produce from under it as he dropped it to the ground a large automatic pistol, place the barrel against his temple and squeeze the trigger.

If you haven't read Dick Francis before - and he's so popular that you probably have, I'd suggest starting chronologically, from Dead Cert (his first novel, 1962), to Straight. He wrote more after that but they are disappointments (either written by a ghost writer or by his son), without the same flair.

Books by Dick Francis. Note that he has only one "series", that of Sid Halley, and Halley is only in a couple of books.
Dead Cert 1962
Nerve 1964
For Kicks 1965
Odds Against 1965
Flying Finish 1966
Blood Sport 1967
Forfeit 1968
Enquiry 1969
Rat Race 1970
Bonecrack 1971
Smokescreen 1972
Slayride 1973
Knockdown 1974
High Stakes 1975
In the Frame 1976
Risk 1977
Trial Run 1978
Whip Hand 1979
Reflex 1980
Twice Shy 1981
Banker 1982
The Danger 1983
Proof 1984
Break In 1985
Bolt 1986
Hot Money 1987
The Edge 1988
Straight 1989
Longshot 1990
Comeback 1991
Driving Force 1992
Decider 1993
Wild Horses 1994
Come to Grief 1995
To the Hilt 1996
10 LB. Penalty 1997
Second Wind 1999
Shattered 2000
Under Orders 2006
Dead Heat 2007 with Felix Francis
Silks 2008 with Felix Francis
Even Money 2009 with Felix Francis

The Murders of Richard III, by Elizabeth Peters

The Murders of Richard III will always have a special place in my heart. I read it when I was about 14 or so... it was the first Elizabeth Peters mystery I read, and started my lifelong fascination with Richard III.

It is not the first, but rather the second novel in the Jacqueline Kirby series, written by the prolific Elizabeth Peters.

Here are is the complete list:

The Seventh Sinner (1972)
Murders of Richard III (1974)
Die for Love (1984)
Naked Once More (1989)

Librarian Jacqueline Kirby is visiting London, and being squired around by Thomas Carter, a friend of hers and an American expatriate. Thomas is a member of a society that wishes to rehabilitate Richard III - Shakespeare's play has cast him as a villain who usurpred the throne from his nephew, and then had the rightful king, and the king's brother, smothered in the Tower of London. In actual fact it was probably Henry VII who ordered that dirty deed done.

In any event, Thomas and Jacqueline attend a houseparty, in which the guests, all who believe Richard to be innocent of the murders, dress up in costume of the period. One of them has found a document that they beleive will clear Richard's name. But as the party goes on, practical jokes, in the manner of the way Richard's alleged victims die, begin to occur.

Why...and who is behind it?

The portrait [of Richard III] had an odd effect on some people. Thomas Carter was one of them. He had seen it innumerable times; indeed, he could summon up those features in memory more clearly than he could those of his own father, who was enjoying an acrimonious eighth decade in Peoria, Illinois. Thomas could not explain the near-hypnoric spell cast by the painted features, but he sincerely hoped they were having the same effect on his companion. He had private reasons for wanting Jacqueline Kirby to develop an interest in Richard III, quondam king of England, who had met a messy death on the field of battle almost five fundred years earlier.

And
"I don't know! I'm sure the letter did exist. Buck couldn't have invented it out of whole cloth. But it's too damned fortuitous to have it turn up now, after all these years. The scholarly world and the press think we're a bunch of crackpots now. If we make a big public spectacle of this - as we are planning to do - and then some goateed expert strolls in and says, "You've been had, ladies and gents; this is Woolworth's best stationery..." You can see how idiotic we would look. And...maybe you won't understand this. But we honestly are concerned with a little matter of justice, even if it's five hundred years late. A fiasco like this..."

"...could hurt Richard's cause," said Jacqueline, as he hesitated. She spoke tentatively, as if the words were too bizarre to be uttered; but as she studied the flushed face of the man across the table, her own face changed. "My God. You really feel..."

"I guess it sounds silly," Thomas said, with no sign of anger. "I can't explain it. In part, it's the fun of an unsolved puzzle; in part, the famous Anglo-Saxon weakness for the underdog. But it's more than that. Do you remember what they wrote about Richard in the official records of the city of York, after they heard the news of Bosworth? "King Richaers, late mercifully reigning upon us...was piteously slain and murdered, to the great heaviness of this city." The men of Yorkshire knew him well; he had lived among them for many years. It took guts to write that epitaph with Henry Tudor on the throne and Richard's cause buried in a felon's grave at Leicester...If there is such a thing as charisma, maybe some people have an extra large dose. Enough to carry through five hundred years.