Andrew Klavan’s A Woman Underground

Book number 51 of 2024

Andrew Klavan is one of my favorite writers and thinkers. He has written many mysteries, thrillers, and some very good nonfiction, as well as producing a weekly podcast on politics and culture. A Woman Underground is the fourth book in his Cameron Winter series, which just gets better and better with each installment.

Winter is a wonderfully deep and complex character – a professor of Romantic literature at a small midwestern college, he was an especially deadly counterintelligence assassin for some very dark and secret missions earlier in his life. Every novel in the series has flashbacks to Winter’s career as a deadly assassin, as he relates them to his therapist – a kindly, older woman who is very much attracted to him. Winter is incapable of maintaining any kind of relationship, because his parents, wealthy New Yorkers, had neither the time nor the inclination to care for him.

His nanny was a refugee from East Germany, and he never got over his childhood crush of her niece, Charlotte Shaefer. His unrequited love has served as an excuse to avoid any intimacy in his adult life. He is a deeply troubled man with a code of honor he tries to live by, even though he is not at all religious. Think of a Raymond Chandler character dropped into the 21st century.

A Woman Underground begins with Part 1: The Scent of Something Gone, Winter realizes that Charlotte may be trying to get in touch with him. One evening he comes home to his apartment and smells the lingering scent of her perfume in the hall. The next morning, he studies the building’s security video, and he sees a bundled up woman carrying a book. The book turns out to be a novel that is popular with right-wing extremists, and it features a heroine who is too similar to Charlotte to be a coincidence. Winter quickly tracks down the author. To avoid any spoilers, I won’t reveal any more details!

Klavan does a masterful job of balancing four(!) separate stories while keeping the reader glued to the page. First, there is the main plotline of Winter tracking down Charlotte. Then, there is a plotline involving an old mission Winter was assigned to bring back an agent who had disappeared in Turkey. When Winter is in therapy, he keeps returning to this story, even though his therapist knows he’s doing it to avoid facing what’s really causing his psychological distress. Third, there’s the plotline of the novel Charlotte was carrying when she tried to see Winter. In it, a small group of right-wingers try to decide what to do during the riots that caused so unrest and destruction in the summer of 2020. Cameron is reading this novel to try to pick up clues as to where Charlotte might be. The fourth subplot is some sexual shenanigans Winter’s colleague at the college gets himself into. Believe it or not, all four of these stories slowly come together into one.

A Woman Underground is a pivotal chapter in Cameron Winter’s development. Several things that had stunted his emotional and psychological maturity are dealt with and resolved. The path to that resolution, however, is a harrowing one. As Klavan describes him, he spends most of the book on the verge of a nervous breakdown. It is only through his therapist’s insightful and compassionate work that he is able to come out whole. By the end, it’s clear that Winter has emerged battered, but stronger and more resilient. I can’t wait to see what Andrew Klavan has in store for him. Bubbling under the surface of the various subplots is a potential global conspiracy that involves extremely powerful Americans who have been compromised. It’s enough to turn the most level-headed person into a paranoid lunatic, and the people Winter can completely trust are down to very few. Things are getting very interesting in Cameron Winter’s life!

Ngaio Marsh’s Enter a Murderer: The Return of Inspector Alleyn

Book number 49 of 2024

I few weeks back, I read my first Ngaio Marsh mystery, A Man Lay Dead. I enjoyed it so much, I immediately bought the sequel, Enter a Murderer. In her character Inspector Alleyn, Marsh has created a witty, intelligent, and very humorous detective. He returns in this book, as well as his sidekick, young journalist Nigel Bathgate. Bathgate’s love interest from A Man Lay Dead, Angela North, does not appear, as Marsh cheekily points out several times:

“Rum!” thought Nigel and walked on thoughtfully. “Very rum!” he said aloud.

Back in his own flat he turned on the light and, after further cogitation, decided to try and put himself in a better mood by writing to Angela North, who does not come into this story.

Marsh, Ngaio. Enter a Murderer: Inspector Roderick Alleyn #2 (p. 102). Felony & Mayhem Press. Kindle Edition.

The murder in this tale happens during a performance of a play on stage. Nigel has been given complimentary tickets by one of the actors, Felix Gardener, and he invites Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn to join him. In the course of the play, one of the actors, Arthur Surbonadier, is supposed to be shot, and the actor who shoots him, Felix Gardener, is supplied with a gun loaded with dead cartridges while a stage manager offstage actually fires a blank. Somehow in the course of this particular performance, the gun is loaded with real rounds and when Gardener squeezes the trigger he accidentally kills Surbonadier. 

Or was it an accident? Gardener is engaged to the lead actress, the beautiful and talented Stephanie Vaughn. Subonadier is obsessively in love with her and threatens her if she doesn’t marry him. As Alleyn quickly takes charge of things immediately after the curtain falls, in becomes clear that Surbonadier was thoroughly disliked by everyone who came into contact with him. Even his uncle, Jacob Saint, who owns the theater where the play is being performed, regrets paying for his education at Cambridge and getting him parts in various plays. 

In short, there is no lack of possible suspects, because multiple people have very good motives. It’s up to Alleyn to carefully weed out the distractions thrown his way by the cast and hone in on the actual murderer. This process gives Marsh lots of opportunities to make fun of the histrionic behavior of the cast members. They all behave as if the investigation is a dramatic production and not an actual murder investigation. Alleyn does not hide his contempt for their scene chewing, and he gets in plenty of good digs at the narcissistic thespians.

Old Susan Max, roundabout, sensible, said: “Come along, dear,” to Miss Vaughan.

Miss Vaughan stretched out her hands dumbly to Gardener, who did not look at her. She turned towards Alleyn, who watched her curiously, and then, with a very touching dignity, she let herself be led off by Susan Max. At the doorway she turned and looked again at the dead man, shuddered, and disappeared into the wings.

“Lovely exit, wasn’t it?” said the inspector.

“Alleyn!” exclaimed Nigel, really shocked.

Miss Janet Emerald, the “heavy” woman, said: “Bounder!” from behind a piece of scenery.

“Let us go,” replied the voice of J. Barclay Crammer. “We are in these people’s hands.” He appeared on the stage, crossed it, and gripped Gardener’s hand.

“Come, old man,” he said. “With me. Together.”

“Oh, get along, the whole lot of you,” exclaimed Alleyn with the utmost impatience. Mr. Crammer looked at him, more in sorrow than in anger, and did as he suggested.

Marsh, Ngaio. Enter a Murderer: Inspector Roderick Alleyn #2 (pp. 27-28). Felony & Mayhem Press. Kindle Edition.

Alleyn is almost playful throughout the novel, as he anticipates the actions of the various suspects. He also has some fun with Nigel Bathgate as he tries to keep up with Alleyn’s investigation. As he, Alleyn, and Detective Bailey are discussing possibly murder scenarios that would explain how it happened, Nigel has an idea:

“Look here,” said Nigel loudly. “Listen!”

“Ssh!” whispered Alleyn excitedly.

“Don’t be silly, now. Listen to me. Miss Vaughan showed you how Surbonadier struck her on the shoulder. Suppose he got the stuff on his hand and—oh no. Sorry.”

“As we were, Bailey,” said Alleyn.

“We all of us make mistakes, sir,” said Detective Bailey kindly. Nigel looked foolish.

Marsh, Ngaio. Enter a Murderer: Inspector Roderick Alleyn #2 (p. 85). Felony & Mayhem Press. Kindle Edition.

Nigel and Alleyn’s relationship matures quite a bit in this novel. Instead the typical “Dr. Watson” role usually played by the detective’s sidekick, Nigel plays an active role in gathering evidence and relaying important personal information to Alleyn. At several points in the story, Alleyn antagonizes Nigel by telling him he mustn’t protect anyone due to personal feelings. Alleyn even orders him to stay away has he prepares to confront the person he suspects of the murder, and Nigel is furious. Despite his anger, he is still full of admiration for his friend and his ability to make all the pieces of the puzzle fit into a suitable explanation of how the murder was carried out.

It turns out Alleyn had his eye on the guilty party from the beginning, but I was fooled. Once again, Marsh provides a satisfying unveiling of the culprit when Alleyn sets up a reenactment in the theater of the scene in which Surbonadier is killed. 

I’m happy to learn that Marsh wrote 32 mystery novels featuring Chief Detective-Inspector Roderick Alleyn – I have many hours of reading pleasure ahead!

Ngaio Marsh’s A Man Lay Dead: A Unique Classic Mystery

Book number 45 of 2024

As readers of this blog should know, I’m a fan of classic British mysteries. I have read quite a few Agatha Christie novels and all of Dorothy Sayers’, but until now I had not read anything by Ngaio Marsh. I remember my Mom reading her books way back when, so I decided to start at the beginning and read her first mystery, A Man Lay Dead. I am so glad I did!

First, this book did not strike me as a tentative first effort by an inexperienced author, the way the John Bude’s The Cornish Coast Murder did. All of the characters are real and have multifaceted personalities. The murder itself is very difficult to figure out how it could have been carried out, let alone by whom. And, there is a fun side-trip into a weird conspiracy of Russian assassins!

A Man Lay Dead begins with the narrator, young journalist Nigel Bathgate, traveling to Sir Hubert Handesley’s Frantock House with his older bon vivant cousin, Charles Rankin. Sir Hubert is throwing a house-party where the guests will play a game of “Murder” – one of them will be randomly chosen to “murder” another guest, and the survivors must figure who the guilty party is. The guest list includes, in addition to Nigel and Rankin, Rosamund Grant, “a tall dark woman whose strange uncompromising beauty would be difficult to forget”, Arthur Wilde and his wife, Marjorie, Dr. Foma Tokareff, a Russian, and Angela Grant, Sir Hubert’s niece.

Nigel discovers in short order that his cousin was romantically involved with Miss Grant, as well as Mrs. Wilde. During dinner the first evening at Frantock, Rankin shows everyone an extremely old dagger that he was given by a grateful man he rescued from a crevasse in a Swiss glacier. When he sees it, Tokareff reacts explosively, exclaiming that it belongs to an ancient secret Russian society with a dark and disturbing history. Sir Hubert’s elderly Russian butler, Vassily, just about has a stroke when he sees the dagger. Sir Hubert, an avid collector of knives, immediately offers to buy it, but Rankin turns him down. Arthur Wilde is an archeologist who specializes in ancient weapons, and he verifies the worth of Rankin’s dagger. Sir Hubert even goes so far as to have Rankin write a note bequeathing him the dagger in the event of Rankin’s death.

There follows some bizarre, to my sense, goings on while the guests relax and get to know each other. Apparently, Rankin and Wilde were schoolmates at Eton, and Rankin decides to relive some schoolboy hijinks:

“Let’s de-bag old Arthur,” suggested Rankin, emerging breathless from the hurly-burly. “Come on, Nigel…come on, Hubert.”
“There’s always something wrong with old Charles when he rags,” thought Nigel. But he held the protesting Wilde while his trousers were dragged off, and joined in the laugh when he stood pale and uncomfortable, clutching a hearthrug to his recreant limbs and blinking short-sightedly.
“You’ve smashed my spectacles,” he said.
Marsh, Ngaio. A Man Lay Dead: Inspector Roderick Alleyn #1 (pp. 25-26). Felony & Mayhem Press. Kindle Edition.

Anyway, you can see where this is going: Rankin ends up dead with his precious dagger in his back. Practically every guest has a legitimate motive to kill him, including Nigel, who is his primary beneficiary. Enter the hero of the novel, Detective Inspector Alleyn. He is a very interesting literary character and unique in my experience. He is not an insufferable egotist like Hercule Poirot, nor a near-superhero like Lord Peter Wimsey. He is extremely competent, he has a sense of humor, he’s well-educated (he drops brief Shakespeare quotes at appropriate moments), he seems to be well off financially, but he is not flashy. He is acutely aware of how he must be feared and disliked by all of the guests as he carries out his investigation, and occasionally his mask of dispassion slips. In other words, he’s a real man.

As Nigel says to Alleyn near the end,

“You are an extraordinary creature,” said Nigel suddenly. “You struck me as being as sensitive as any of us just before you made the arrest. Your nerves seemed to be all anyhow. I should have said you hated the whole game. And now, an hour later, you utter inhuman platitudes about types. You are a rum ’un.”

“Unspeakable juvenile! Is this your manner when interviewing the great? Come and dine with me tomorrow.”
Marsh, Ngaio. A Man Lay Dead: Inspector Roderick Alleyn #1 (p. 173). Felony & Mayhem Press. Kindle Edition.

I also admire Marsh’s ability to keep me guessing right up to the last chapter. I was actually feeling somewhat smug, thinking I had solved the mystery about two-thirds of the way into the story, but I was wrong! I highly recommend A Man Lay Dead if you’re a fan of classic British mystery, and I have already downloaded Marsh’s next Inspector Alleyn novel, Enter A Murderer.

John Bude’s The Sussex Downs Murder – Excellent Classic British Mystery

Book Number 34 of 2024

This is the third John Bude mystery I’ve read, and it is his best so far. The Cornish Coast Murder was a promising first novel, and The Lake District Murder introduced Inspector Meredith. In The Sussex Downs Murder, Meredith has been promoted to a superintendent, and he is a confident investigator dealing with a fiendishly difficult crime to solve.

In this, his third mystery novel, Bude really hits his stride. He is much better at conveying the beauty of the English countryside and the quirky characteristics of its inhabitants. Here’s a passage involving a “simple” young man, Ned, who has some useful information regarding the case, but he is reluctant to go to the police:

“The law’s the law—there’s no ’voiding that fact, Ned. You ought to see Constable Pinn.”
Ned shook his head loosely and backed away with an alarmed look in his roving eye. “Nay—not Oi. Oi don’t go making trouble, then! Constable might lock Oi up.”
“I’ll see that he won’t do that, Ned,” urged Tom Golds. “You come with me to-night and see if the constable’s at home.”
“Oi don’t like it,” hedged Ned with great uneasiness.
“ ’Tis a murder case, Ned,” pointed out old Garge. “ ’Tis as much as ’ee owe to Mister John to see the constable.”
“Oi still don’t like it,” protested Ned.
“I’ll stand you a pint o’ bitter if you do,” said Tom Golds diplomatically.
“Make it two,” put in old Garge.
“Three!” said Charlie Finnet.
“Four!” added Cyril Smith.
“Oi’ll go,” said Ned promptly. “Oi’ll do it.”
It seemed that sometimes Ned was far less simple than he appeared to be on the surface of things.
John Bude. The Sussex Downs Murder (pp. 67-68). Distributed Proofreaders Canada. Kindle Edition.

That dry sense of humor is employed throughout The Sussex Downs Murder to great effect. In one scene, Meredith is interviewing a woman who runs a small post office and speaks with an affected high society accent:

“Yes, there is that,” mused Meredith. “And where is this cottage of his?”
“You go up the street past the castle, take the first to the rate, and his cottage lies about two hundred yards up Wate’s Lane.”
“Waits Lane,” repeated Meredith with a nod of thanks.
“No. No. Wate’s—W-h-i-t-e-s Lane.”
 “Oh, sorry. I see—thanks.”
John Bude. The Sussex Downs Murder (p. 167). Distributed Proofreaders Canada. Kindle Edition.

So what about the murder to be solved? Well, it’s quite good, and much better than Bude’s previous two efforts. Two brothers, John and William Rother, live on a farm with a lime kiln. William is married to Janet. It appears that John has feelings for Janet, which she does not reciprocate. John leaves for a week-long holiday, but before much time has elapsed, his car is found parked far off the road with the windshield smashed in and blood on the seat. It appears there was a struggle, but there’s no body.

After a while, some construction workers are mixing cement using lime from the Rother farm when they find a piece of a human thigh bone in the lime. Meredith soon finds all the lime recently manufactured by the Rothers, and sure enough, there are many more bone fragments. With the help of a local anatomy professor, he is able to reconstruct the skeleton, which is only missing its skull. Meredith also finds some personal objects in the lime that belonged to John Rother, so he is able to convince the jury at the inquest to return a verdict of “Murder by Person or Persons Unknown”.

We then follow Superintendent Meredith as he travels all over the county unraveling a very clever murder plot. I won’t say any more to avoid spoilers, but Bude had me guessing up to the end who the culprit was.

Another interesting element in The Sussex Downs Murder is Bude’s character of Aldous Barnet, a local mystery author. Through him, Bude is able to explain his philosophy of writing:

“As a police official and a reader of detective fiction, what exactly is your idea about that type of story? You know, I should value your opinion.”
“Well,” said Meredith, flattered to be asked, “I think every yarn should be based on a sense of reality. I mean, let the characters, situations, and the detection have a lifelike ring about ’em. Intuition is all very well, but the average detective relies more on common sense and the routine of police organizations for results. Take this case, for example. The clues have led me all over the place, and quite honestly I’m very little further after a month’s intensive investigation than I was a couple of days after the crime was discovered. That’s normal. Half the work of a detective is not to find out what is but what isn’t! You might remember that fact in your next yarn, sir. As for the crime itself, choose something neat but not gaudy. The gaudy type of murder is more easily found out. The neat, premeditated crime is by far the most difficult to solve and will provide your readers with a load of neat detection.”
John Bude. The Sussex Downs Murder (pp. 114-115). Distributed Proofreaders Canada. Kindle Edition.

Bude employs this “meta” analysis of the art of writing mysteries throughout the novel, and it’s a lot of fun to hear his voice speaking through one of the characters.

If you’re looking for a good classic British mystery, The Sussex Downs Murder is an excellent choice. In it, Bude has matured into an author who is enjoyable to read, while presenting a very difficult puzzle to solve. His protagonist, Superintendent Meredith, is much more fleshed out as well. He has a sense of humor, a family, and perseverance that serves him well. I am glad the British Library Crime Series has brought this forgotten author to a new audience!