B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 126

FFB: American Detective Stories

In the 1996 anthology The Oxford Book of American Detective Stories, Tony Hillerman and Rosemary Herbert collected 33 stories that help trace the evolution of crime fiction in the U.S. from locked room mysteries, to hard-boiled tales of the '30s and '40s, to police procedurals from the latter part of the 20th century.



The book starts off with Poe and "Murders in the Rue Morge," which Hillerman notes is the basic model for the classic detective tale. He also points out how American authors tended to be ignorant of—or just plain ignore—the conventions of Ronald Knox's "Ten Commandments of Detective Writing" from 1928 as well as the philosophy of what editor/critic Jacques Brazum called "escape literature for the intellectual."



Instead of focusing exclusively on whodunit, writers like Ed McBain were more interested in why the crime had been committed, as in his story "Small Homicide," included in the anthology. Or hints of social purpose and realism, as in Anna Katherine Green's "Missing: Page Thirteen," featuring one of the earliest femle protagonists. Or a peek into social decadence and the human condition, as shown in Raymond Chandler's "I'll Be Waiting."



The goal of Hillerman and Herbert was to illustrate as many aspects of the American detective story as they could, with amateur sleuths, ethnic sleuths, regional sleuths, scientific sleuths like Arthur B. Reed's Professor Craig Kenndy, hard-boiled private eyes like Robert Leslie Bellem's Dan Turner and cops like Hillerman's own Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn in the story "Chee's Witch."



Although the editors had an educational intention in mind, they also wanted to entertain, hoping readers "will find the volume just plain fun to read." It is most definitely that, and also a reminder of all the wonderful contributions that the late Tony Hillerman himself made to enrich and promote crime fiction.

            

Mystery Melange

The Wolfe Pack (the society of fans of Rex Stout's mysteries featuring Nero Wolfe), held their 42nd annual Black Orchid Weekend this past weekend, including the presentation of the annual Nero Award for Best American Mystery. This year's winner was Walter Mosley for Down the River Unto the Sea, the second win for Mosley, who also snagged the Nero in 2004 for Fear Itself. Also awarded was the winner of the Black Orchid Novella Award, which went to Ted Burge for "The Red Taxi," which will be published next summer in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. (HT to Classic Mysteries)

The annual Goodreads Choice Awards winners were announced, including The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides, which won the Best Mystery & Thriller category. The other top vote-getters included Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer; The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware; and The Lost Man by Jane Harper.

The late Ruth Rendell was perhaps best known for her psychological thrillers and series featuring Chief Inspector Wexford, but she was also a strong advocate for literacy. The Ruth Rendell Award was established for outstanding contribution to raising literacy levels in the UK, and this year the winner is children's author Tom Palmer.

It's always nice to see crime 'zines succeed and even return after a hiatus, which is the case for All Due Respect. It was created by Alec Cizak in 2010 and handed it over to Chris Rhatigan in 2012, who will continue as editor for the resurrected version, along with David Nemeth. ADR will publish one "hard-as-nails crime fiction" short story each month, with all published stories to be collected into an annual anthology published via Down & Out Books.

Elizabeth Foxwell, of the Bunburyist blog, is also Managing editor of Clues: A Journal of Detection as well as editor of the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series. She wrote on the blog that she has a wishlist for proposals for the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series, but you contribute, too:  pitch a book manuscript proposal on alternative subjects for an upcoming book, as long as any nominated author has a substantial body of work (roughly defined as a minimum of 25 books). Previous installments in the series to date have covered John Buchan, E.X. Farrars, Ed McBain (a/k/a Evan Hunter), Andrea Camilleri, Sara Paretsky, James Ellroy, PD James, and Ngaio Marsh.

More "best of 2019" lists have been announced, including a selection of The Guardian's choices for "Best Crime and Thrillers of 2019," as well as Marilyn Stasio's picks for The New York Times.

Think you know everything there is to know about Agatha Christie? Well, then, this quiz is for you. (HT to Sisters in Crime)

Looks like police officers have a new K9 program. I, for one, welcome our robodog overlords.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Arm in Arm" by Elaine Person.

In the Q&A roundup, the Mystery People's Scott Montgomery spoke with Ken Bruen about his novel, Galway Girl; author Con Lehane chatted with Randal Brandt, the archivist of Berkeley's Legendary Detective Fiction Collection; Janet Evanovich was interviewed by the Washington Post about her "career plot twist" (a recap here for nonsubscribers); and Crime Fiction Lover sat down with Leigh Russell, whose latest installment in the bestselling DI Geraldine Steel series is Deathly Affair.

           Related StoriesMystery Melange, Thanksgiving EditionMystery Melange 

Media Murder for Monday

It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a brand-new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Yes, it's the start of cinema awards season again, beginning with the 2019 New York Film Critics Circle winners, announced last week. Martin Scorsese's mob drama, The Irishman, was named Best Film, while Joe Pesci won Best Supporting Actor for his role in the movie. The brother team of Josh and Benny Safdie won Best Director nods for the heist drama, Uncut Gems; and Quentin Tarantino won Best Screenplay for Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.

Likewise, the Los Angeles Film Critics Award winners were announced yesterday, with The Irishman winning the Runner-up Best Picture nod (with Martin Scorsese landing Runner-up Best Director for the film), behind the South Korean film, Parasite (Best Picture and Director). Actor Joe Pesci was also the Runner-up winner for his supporting role in The Irishman.

The 25th annual Critics Choice Association’s (formerly the Broadcast Film Critics Association) Critics’ Choice Awards nominations, also announced yesterday, includes Best Picture nods for The Irishman and Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, with Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino picking up Best Director nominations, respectively. Best Acting nominations included The Irishman (Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, and Best Ensemble); Once Upon a Time (Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Julia Butters, and Best Ensemble), as well as a Best Ensemble nod to Knives Out. 

The Golden Globe nominations were announced earlier today, and The Irishmen continued its award season accolades with a nod for Best Drama, while Knives Out and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood were both nominated in the Best Comedy/Musical category. Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino were also Best Director nominees for Irishman and Once Upon a Time. Acting-wise, Knives Out had two nominees, Daniel Craig and Ana de Armas; "Once" had two, Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt; and The Irishman, two, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci. For all the nominees in the various categories, follow this link.

After first  releasing a teaser for the trailer, the official trailer dropped for No Time to Die, the latest⁠—and last⁠—outing for Daniel Craig as James Bond. The movie is expected to hit theaters on April 10th.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

The Golden Globe television nominee lists included several crime dramas in various categories, namely Big Little Lies, Killing Eve, Mr. Robot, Unbelievable, The Spy, and The Act.

The 25th annual Critics Choice Association’s Critics’ Choice Awards nominations, includes nods to The Good Fight (Best Drama); plus acting nominations for Christine Baranski, Delroy Lindo, and Audra McDonald (The Good Fight); Jodie Comer (Killing Eve); Nicole Kidman, Laura Dern, and Meryl Streep (Big Little Lies), Mahershala Ali (True Detective); Jesse Plemons (El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie).

Indie feature studio Roadside Attractions continues its foray into scripted television by acquiring Robert Dugoni’s bestselling spy thriller, The Eighth Sister, to develop as a TV drama. Set in present-day US and Russia, The Eighth Sister (the first book in a planned series), follows Charles Jenkins, a long-retired African American CIA case-officer who is re-engaged by his former bureau chief to run a top-secret mission in current day Moscow—only to find himself running for his life and possibly betrayed by his own country.

ABC has given a put-pilot commitment with penalty to ISB (working title), a one-hour crime drama from Kevin Costner, Aaron Helbing, A+E Studios, and 20th Century Fox TV. Written and executive produced by Costner and Helbing, ISB follows the elite special agents of the Investigative Services Branch who are tasked with solving the most complex and heinous crimes committed within the National Parks of the ISB’s Pacific West region.

Fox has put into development a remake of the British crime drama, Silent Witness, to star Melissa Leo, who will exec produce alongside Outlander writer Joy Blake and Kim and Eric Tannenbaum. Silent Witness is a long-running legal drama, airing on the BBC since 1996. It follows two determined women with conflicting methodologies working for the Chief Medical Examiner in the shadow of a major departmental scandal involving corruption at the highest levels. 

Spanish crime thriller, The Room, is set for a UK adaptation. The series follows Yago Costa, who was considered a top-notch police detective until he committed murder. Now, he is in prison and aims to tell the world why he did it. He’s counting on help from Sara, a young and ambitious journalist to whom he gives his exclusive story, but she has to decide if she's willing to put her own life in danger to get to the truth—and, ultimately, whether she can trust him.

BBC Studios has secured its first commission from Irish public broadcaster RTÉ, a noir thriller from The Spanish Princess and Mr. Selfridge writer Kate O’Riordan. The six-part series is set on the rugged coast of County Clare where a wife investigates the brutal death of her husband who is found dead at the foot of a cliff the morning after a family party. As she unravels the circumstances that led to his demise, she discovers how his controlling, manipulative behavior impacted their children and his siblings and comes to the shocking realization one of them may have been driven to murder.

HBO has greenlighted The White House Plumbers, a five-part limited series starring Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux, which revisits one of the biggest political scandals in American history. The project is based in part on public records and Integrity, the book by Egil "Bud" Krogh and Matthew Krogh. The series tells the true story of how Nixon’s own political saboteurs and Watergate masterminds, E. Howard Hunt (Harrelson) and G. Gordon Liddy (Theroux), accidentally toppled the Presidency they were zealously trying to protect.

Greg Silverman’s Stampede Ventures has acquired best-selling author Max Seeck’s thriller novel, The Faithful Reader (to be published as The Witch Hunter in the  U.S.), for a TV series adaptation. The story follows Detective Jessica Niemi, who is called to investigate an extraordinary murder case. The wife of a famous writer, Roger Koponen, seems to have been killed in a bizarre ritual. As more ritual murders occur, it becomes obvious that Jessica is after a serial killer. But the murders are not random – they follow a pattern taken from Roger’s bestselling trilogy. Has a fan gone mad, or is this case more personal? How can Jessica stop a criminal who knows every detail of the book even better than the author?

Gal Gadot will produce a U.S. adaptation of the Israeli crime drama Queens for Endemol Shine. The most-watched series of 2018 for the Israeli network HOT, Queens follows the women of the Malka family who must band together after all the Malka men are murdered by a rival crime syndicate. Thrust into a life that they did not choose or necessarily want, the women realize they can finally control their own destinies and respond to each other and the world around them as complete individuals, all while trying to stay alive.

Wild Sheep Content is teaming with France’s Studio Reaz to adapt Marked for Life, the debut novel by Scandinavian crime writer Emelie Schepp. The story centers on Jana Berzelius, a young, brilliant but emotionally stunted Swedish prosecutor, who was adopted as a child and can’t remember anything about her life before the age of nine. While investigating the death of a prominent figure in her community, she follows a trail that leads to a dead young boy who has a tattoo on the back of his neck similar to Jana’s, further deepening the mystery. 

BBC One has commissioned a legal drama, Showtrial, a six-part series about a murder trial that explodes in the national consciousness. The project follows Talitha Campbell, the arrogant daughter of a wealthy entrepreneur, who is put on trial following the disappearance of fellow student, Hannah Ellis, the hard-working daughter of a single mother. Showtrial follows both sides of the argument from the point of arrest to the verdict, with the nation gripped by the details of the case, which touches on wealth, politics and prejudice.

The primary cast is set for Netflix's eight-episode thriller series, Clickbait, which "explores the ways in which our most dangerous and uncontrolled impulses are fueled in the age of social media and reveals the ever widening fractures we find between our virtual and real-life personas." Zoe Kazan stars as Pia Brewer, a young woman desperate for answers in the search for her missing brother, a case that has become a media sensation. Betty Gabriel and Adrian Grenier will play Pia's family members, while Phoenix Raei plays a detective with the Oakland Police Department who finds himself at the center of a media storm as he investigates this case.

Natalie Martinez, Brian Geraghty, Genesis Rodriguez, and Keilani Arellanes have joined Kiefer Sutherland and Boyd Holbrook in Quibi’s The Fugitive, a new take on the 1993 Harrison Ford film that was in turn based on the 1960s TV series. This version of the story centers on Mike Russo (Holbrook), a blue-collar worker who just wants to make sure his wife and 10-year-old daughter are safe when a bomb rips through the Los Angeles subway train he’s riding on. When Mike is wrongfully blamed, he must prove his innocence by uncovering the real perpetrator, before the legendary Detective Clay Bryce (Sutherland) who's heading the investigation can apprehend him. 

CBS has put in development Truth & Justice, a crime drama from one of its top drama showrunners, Peter Lenkov (Hawaii Five-O, MacGyver, Magnum P.I.), as well as The Oath creator Joe Halpin and The Dirt author Neil Strauss. The project revolves around a disgraced cop-turned-PI and a down-and-out journalist, both seeking redemption, who team up and use nothing but their intellect, perseverance and profound empathy to dive deep into the lives of victims and perpetrators to deliver the justice that is so desperately needed in an otherwise flawed system.

The BBC One murder-mystery drama, Shetland, is to return for two more series. Based on the crime novels of Ann Cleeves, series six and seven will be filmed in 2020 and 2021 for six, hour-long episodes in each season. Shetland, starring Douglas Henshall as Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez, debuted on BBC One back in 2013.

Briana Cuoco, sister of The Flight Attendant star and executive producer Kaley Cuoco, has been tapped for a recurring role on the upcoming HBO Max series. The Flight Attendant centers on Cassie (Kaley), a flight attendant who wakes up in the wrong hotel, in the wrong bed, with a dead man—and no idea what happened. Briana will play Cecilia, a quirky and ambitious assistant who’s obsessed with organization and eavesdropping on calls.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

A new episode of Mysteryrat's Maze podcast is up, featuring the Christmas mystery short story "A Christmas Trifle" by Donna Andrews, read by actor Ariel Linn.

Special guest co-host Alafair Burke joined Eric Beetner on Writer Types to talk with authors Kate White and Steph Cha. Eric also spoke with four Australian authors on a tour of the United States: Emma Viskic, Sulari Gentill, Jock Serong, and Robert Gott.

Speaking of Eric Beetner, he was named on the latest episode of Frank Zafiro's Wrong Place, Write Crime podcast by guest Connie Irvine as one of the authors whose books you should get to know, along with Colin Conway and others.

Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean Horner and Rincey Abraham talked about what mysteries they read this year that were their favorites.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club welcomed attorney J.K. Franko to talk about the first in The Talion Trilogy, Eye for Eye, which sees one couple take the law into their own hands with disastrous consequences.

           Related StoriesMedia Murder for Monday 

Sunday Music Treat - A Christmas Crime Carol

From now until Christmas, I thought I'd feature a holiday-themed selection on Sunday Music Treat from film scores of crime movies through the years. Today's Christmas Crime Carol is "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" a song by lyricist Sammy Cahn and composer Jule Styne from July 1945, as performed by Vaughan Monroe. It was used during the closing credits for the 1990 action-thriller film, Die Hard 2: Die Harder.

 

           Related StoriesSunday Music Treat 

Quote of the Week

           Related StoriesQuote of the WeekQuotation of the Week 

FFB: Murder Intercontinental

Long before the current wave of crime fiction flooding in from all parts of the world, authors from countries outside the U.S. and the U.K. were writing stories and novels set in a variety of locales. Even in the two mystery-mainstay countries, American and British authors have often used exotic settings to inspire and entertain. One anthology that takes a look at this globe-hopping in crime fiction stories is Murder Intercontinental, published in 1996.



Editors Cynthia Manson and Kathleen Halligan culled their choices from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and decided on twenty authors with stories spanning seven continents taking place over the course of a century. The book starts off with "the Missing House" by Hayford Peirce, set in Tahiti (which the editors mistakenly label as being part of the Caribbean), in which a Kansas-born PI, who is scrounging a living in Tahiti, must find a house the owner swears was stolen. That's followed by geographical sections divided into North America, Latin America, Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, Western Europe and the Middle East, although some areas are only represented with one story.



There are well-known authors included: Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot in Egypt, Ruth Rendell's Chief Inspector Wexford in London; Georges Simenon's Inspector Maigret in a small French village. Others are less familiar, such as Kenneth Gavrell's P.I. Carlos Banon investigating a drive-by shooting linked to a senatorial candiate in Puerto Rico; Shizuko Natsuki's Lieutenant Soto investigating a bank robbery in a Japanese resort town he links to the suicide of a temple employee; and Josh Pachter's Mahboob Chaudri solving a crime on the Muslim holy day of Ramadan in Bahrain.



Even the settings in North America are more exotic, with Native American-themed tales from Manly Wade Wellman and William T. Lowe, and a haunting little story from James Sarafin titled "The Word for Breaking August Sky," set in a remote Eskimo village in Alaska and featuring an African-American chief of police, that might best be described as lyrical paranormal noir (and was also later included in the 2002 anthology The Mysterious North, edited by Dana Stabenow).

Here are the regions with their various contributions:



The Caribbean : "The Missing House" / Hayford Peirce



North America : "A Knife Between Brothers" / Manly Wade Wellman; "There are No Snakes in Hawaii" / Juanita Sheridan; "The Word for Breaking August Sky" / James Sarafin; "Corollary" / Hughes Allison; "Kaddish" / Batya Swift Yasgur; "All Indians are Warriors" / William T. Lowe



Latin American : "There are No Stars over San Juan" / Kenneth Gavrell; "The Hair of the Widow" / Robert Somerlott



Asia : "The Sole of the Foot" / Shizuko Natsuki; "The Courage of Akira-kun" / Ron Butler



Africa : "To Catch a Wizard" / Walter Satterthwait



Eastern Europe : "Hide-and-seek, Russian style" / Patricia McGerr



Europe : "Journey into Time" / Georges Simenon; "Who Killed that Son of a Doge?" / David Braly ; "Suspect" / Patricia Highsmith; "The Mists of Ballyclough" / Barbara Callahan; "Inspector Wexford and the Winchurch Affair" / Ruth Rendell

The Middle East : "The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb" / Agatha Christie; "The Night of Power" / Josh Pachter

            

Media Murder for Monday

I hope everyone had a thanks-filled weekend surrounded by family and friends! (And maybe some pie...)

Since it's the start of a new week, that means it's time for a brand-new (and slightly truncated) roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Warner Bros. has hired director Albert Hughes to helm a reboot of the 1993 crime drama, The Fugitive. The film is said to put a "new spin" on the original film starring Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones about an innocent man running from the law for murdering his wife. The film was in turn based on a 1963 TV series starring David Janssen and Barry Morse. (The Warner Bros project is not to be confused with the streaming service Quibi's reboot of The Fugitive, which stars Kiefer Sutherland and Boyd Holbrook in the story of a bomber attacking an LA subway station.)

Saban Films has acquired North American rights to Martin Owen’s Twist. The modern take on Charles Dickens’s classic, Oliver Twist, stars Academy Award-winner Michael Caine along with Lena Headey, Rita Ora, Raff Law, and Sophie Simnett. From a script written by John Wrathall and set in contemporary London, the story follows a gifted graffiti artist who is lured into a street gang headed by a father figure, Fagin, who plans a series of audacious art thefts. Also starring are Robert Glenister (Live By Night), George Russo (I Am Soldier) and Izuka Hoyle (Mary Queen of Scots).

Production is underway on the British drama, Here Before, the feature debut of writer and director Stacey Gregg. The psychological thriller stars Birdman's Andrea Riseborough as a bereaved mother who begins to question her reality when new neighbors move in next door.

Finn Wittrock has been added to the cast of Deep Water, the Adrian Lyne-directed thriller starring Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas. The story is based on a Patricia Highsmith novel and follows an attractive young married couple, Vic and Melinda Van Allen, whose mind games with each other take a twisted turn when people around them start turning up dead.

Vertigo Releasing has picked up the Craig Fairbrass-starring thriller, Villain, for UK and Ireland release. Villain follows Eddie Franks, a man who is released from prison after serving a 10-year sentence and attempts to help his family by reconnecting with his daughter and clearing his brother’s debt. Despite his best efforts, he finds himself drawn back into a life of crime, with devastating consequences.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Killing Eve director Shannon Murphy and Beatrix Christian (Picnic at Hanging Rock) are adapting Emily Bitto’s novel, The Strays, as a six-part TV series. Inspired by the Australian artist collective Heide Circle, The Strays explores what happens when a violent act in the past of a subversive group of artists is linked to the death of a young woman in the present.

Justified alum David Meunier is set for a recurring role in Marvel’s Helstrom, the forthcoming Hulu series based on the comic book. Helstrom follows Daimon and Ana Helstrom, played by Tom Austen and Sydney Lemmon, the son and daughter of a mysterious and powerful serial killer. Meunier will play Finn Miller, a part of a secret organization that handles work not for the faint of heart.

The Tony Award-winning actress Katrina Lenk (The Band’s Visit) has been cast in a recurring role in CBS’s upcoming midseason drama series, Tommy, as a sports agent. Tommy stars Edie Falco as Abigail "Tommy" Thomas, a former high-ranking NYPD officer who becomes the first female Chief of Police for Los Angeles.

HBO Max has picked the U.S. rights to the British crime drama, White House Farm, starring The Irishman’s Stephen Graham and Black ’47’s Freddie Fox. The six-part series is based on the true story of members of the same family who were murdered at an Essex farmhouse in 1985. Graham plays DCI "Taff" Jones and Fox plays the killer, Jeremy Bamber. Mark Addy, Gemma Whelan, Mark Stanley, Alexa Davies, Cressida Bonas, Alfie Allen, Amanda Burton, and Nicholas Farrell also star.

Amazon has ordered a second season of the Indian thriller, The Family Man. The series stars Manoj Bajpayee and Priyamani and tells the story of a middle-class man who secretly works as a spy for a branch of the National Investigation Agency while also dealing with a wife and two kids.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

The latest Spybrary podcast featured a round table discussion about Agent Running In the Field by John le Carré.

On the Writers Detective Bureau, host and veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson tackled the topics of "Boot, Deconfliction, and Pending Further Leads."

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club welcomed two authors to the show, Rosemary Simpson (the Gilded Age Mysteries) and Gilly Macmillan, whose first novel, What She Knew was an Edgar Award finalist.

           Related StoriesMedia Murder for Monday 

Quote of the Week

            

FFB: The Bulrush Murders

Rebecca Rothenberg was one of five authors Elizabeth Foxwell highlighted as female mystery writers who left us too soon. In Rothenberg's case, she died in 1998 of a brain tumor at the age of 50. In addition to being an author, Rothenberg was a musician, epidemiologist and amateur botanist. Her series with microbiologist Claire Sharples included three books in all (with a fourth finished by her friend Taffy Cannon), beginning with The Bulrush Murders in 1991, only seven years before the author's death. It went on to be named as one of the Top Ten Mysteries of the year by the Los Angeles Times and was nominated for the Agatha and Anthony awards (appropriate in advance of next week's Bouchercon conference).



The Bulrush Murders introduces us to Claire Sharples, who is feeling like one of her caged laboratory rats, working in MIT's research facilities. On an impulse, she takes an agricultural research job in a rural part of California's San Joaquin Valley, only to discover that the bleak region is most notable for its absences of rain, decent conversation, jazz music and good Thai restaurants. When a young Hispanic friend drives plunges his motorcycle into a reservoir, Claire investigates the circumstances surrounding his death with the help of her new enigmatic coworker Sam. She soon finds herself unhappily drawn to the ill-mannered field scientist Sam, to the suspicious death that indicates it wasn't an accident, and to the mystery of why a Mexican farm family's crops seem to be the only ones in the San Joaquin Valley suffering from a blight. Even the death in Vietnam of the young murdered man's brother might not be what it first seemed.



Rothenberg created an appealing fish-out-water protagonist in Claire, who has one foot in two different worlds and not a single foot on a firm emotional foundation:

No mistaking which "community" she belonged to—not of souls but of namers, the Community of Scientists: a bunch of self-absorbed misanthropic misfits who retreated from the demands and ambiguities of the world into their self-created, logical, orderly systems, devising technical solutions to spiritual problems...and me, she thought. I'm like that. Sometimes I think I'm not because--why? Because I'm female? Because I have the vocabulary to talk about feelings? But I'm just like them: give me a touch intellectual puzzle and I perform like an integrated circuit; put me in a situation requiring an emotional response and I fall apart. Or else I concert it to an algorithm, a model, a problem I can solve. Something I can "look up."

The Los Angeles Times Book Review's Charles Champlin called The Bulrush Murders "A spellbinding first mystery ...[an ] intricate and action-rich plot...At the story's center, always, is an affecting and insightful portrait of a bright woman struggling for simple equality in an environment as prickly and hostile as some of the wild grasses the author describes so well." Kirkus Reviews added, "A convincing look at racism in southern California, agricultural hardships, and the difficulty that arises when opposites fall in love. A judicious balance of science and emotion, then, and a better-than-average debut."



The other two books in the series by Rothenberg are The Dandelion Murders and The Shy Tulip Murders, and the novel completed by Taffy Cannon is titled The Tumbleweed Murders.

            

Happy Books-Giving

 

           Related StoriesHappy Fourth!Happy New Year!Merry Bookmas to All