The Body in the Convent

Catherine Aird's works recently appeared mysteriously on the ebook library shelves. As this was soon after I finished attending the library's History of Mystery class, I am wondering if perhaps this is a happy coincidence.

Ms. Aird (whose real name is Kinn Hamilton McIntosh) is a British crime fiction writer. She was born in 1930, in the midst of the Golden Age of mysteries, and has so far published more than twenty crime novels and a few collections of short stories. 

I am reading her first effort, The Religious Body, which was published in 1966. Here she introduces the detective duo of Chief Inspector C.D. Sloan and his young assistant Constable Crosby. The book opens with Sister Mary St. Gertrude making her morning rounds and knocking on bedroom doors to waken the sisters in the Convent of St. Anselm. One nun, Sister Anne, is not in her room and is later discovered dead at the bottom of the cellar steps. Although at first it seems she died from an accidental fall, it turns out that the real cause of death was a blow from the ubiquitous 'blunt instrument'.

How the police and the nuns are going to get on together in the solution to this murder promises to be an interesting read. DCI Sloan has a sly sense of humor that his more naive constable does not often understand. The detectives also are getting assistance from Father MacAuley who seems anxious to help. Or hinder, as the case may be.

So far, I have enjoyed Ms. Aird's  lively writing. It is always a bonus when both the prose and the puzzle are entertaining.

I was thinking about other books I have read that take place in a convent. Here are a few titles I came up with:

Good Behavior by Donald Westlake - In which professional burglar John Dortmunder, in an effort to escape the police, falls through the roof of a convent and agrees to help the nuns rescue one of their own who has been kidnapped by her disapproving father. Very funny.

A Nun in the Closet by Dorothy Gilman - This story, by the author of the Mrs. Pollifax series, doesn't really take place in a convent, but it does involve nuns, a bunch of money, gangsters, and murder. I wrote about it here.

In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden - The story of a middle-aged professional woman who joins a contemplative order of Benedictine nuns. No crime here, but if I remember correctly it does contain a mystery. And there is plenty of insider information concerning what goes on behind the convent walls.

I find it fascinating to read about what life is like in these closed communities, murder or no. Do you have any Nun Stories that you have enjoyed and would like to recommend? 

Bad News by Donald Westlake

The bad news is that now having finished reading Bad News I am that much closer to the end of the Dortmunder capers written by Donald Westlake. It is number ten in the series and I only have four to go. 

Of course, Mr. W. penned many stand-alone capers and mysteries, some not always humorous, but I have a certain fondness for John Dortmunder and his cohorts.

In this tale John and his boys conspire with a couple of con artists trying to lay claim to the ownership of a casino run by two Indian tribes near the Canadian border. This involves trying to prove that one Little Feather Redcorn is the last living descendant (she's not) of a third tribe that once shared in the profits of the casino. Along the way there is the digging up of bodies, the switching of headstones, and DNA tests.  The cast includes high-powered New York attorneys, a small town judge who has seen enough 'stupidity' in his courtroom to last a lifetime, and the public defender appointed to defend Little Feather, actually a former Las Vegas showgirl and blackjack dealer, when the casino owners have her arrested for extortion.

Oh, yes. There is also the theft of a snow plow and the stealing of some valuable and fenceable objects from a historic home. Only Dortmunder could plan a successful robbery that depended on a blizzard.

As usual, it is all great fun and Westlake writes his characters in and out of situations faster than you can spin a roulette wheel. 

Belles-Lettres: Brilliant, Blue-Ribbon Books 2013

Biggest Surprise of the Year -  I Loved This Book! 

So Big by Edna Ferber; published in 1924

Top Three Non-Fiction Books That Were Entire Educations in Themselves: 

At Home by Bill Bryson; How to Live, Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell; The Island of Lost Maps by Miles Harvey

Top Three Fiction Books (not mysteries): 

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster; Equilateral by Ken Kalfus; Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury.

Author Most Read: 

Donald Westlake - Six of his Dortmunder capers

Most Delightful Reread: 

Counting My Chickens... by The Duchess of Devonshire

Brothers I Would Most Like to Meet: 

Reggie and Nigel Heath of The Baker Street Letters, The Brothers of Baker Street, and The Baker Street Translation by Michael Robertson

Best Foreign Location: 

Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen and West With the Night by Beryl Markham

Most Laugh-Out-Loud Dysfunctional Family: 

The Spellman Files and The Curse of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz

Dreamiest Tale: 

The Frozen Thames by Helen Humphreys

Best Road Trip: 

The Lost Continent - Travels in Small-Town America by Bill Bryson

Mystery Writer I Am So Glad I Found: 

Peter Lovesey - The Last Detective, Diamond Solitaire, The Summons, and Bloodhounds. 

As If I Needed More Reasons Not To Go On A Cruise: 

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace.

Proof That The South Shall Rise Again: 

Mama Makes Up Her Mind by Bailey White.

Authors I Have Met and Their Books I Read This Year: 

Duffy Brown (Killer in Crinolines), William Zinsser (The Writer Who Stayed), and George S. McGovern (Abraham Lincoln)

What's the Worst That Could Happen? by Donald Westlake

This is the I Ching symbol that starts
the trouble for John Dortmunder.

What's the Worst That Could Happen? When John Dortmunder and his crew are involved, plenty. In the ninth caper starring the hapless professional thief Dortmunder, the tables are turned and the burglar gets robbed.

Here's the set up:

Trans-Global Universal Industries - TUI - is owned by wealthy, arrogant, I Ching-consulting Max Fairbanks. Max Fairbanks's Long Island home (one of his many residences) is burgled by John Dortmunder. Only Max catches John in the act. The police are called. Max accuses John of stealing his ring - a cheap thing that Dortmunder wears for good luck - and the police strip the ring from Dortmunder's hand and give it to Max, the not-rightful owner. The ring's signet, if you will, is the I Ching symbol of twee, the Joyous. It is TUI's logo and is what Fairbanks based his whole corporation on. So naturally, Max thinks he has a right to possess the ring.

The police shuffle Dortmunder off to jail, but he escapes. His mission in life now becomes Get the Ring Back. It's the principle of the thing, you know? 

He sets out tracking Max and the ring - a journey that takes him and his good friend Andy Kelp to Fairbanks's penthouse apartments in Manhattan and in the Watergate complex in Washington D.C. and eventually to Las Vegas. John is not a big fan of travel which makes his forays out of New York City all the more amusing. And as is the way in the life of The Dortmunder, the worst that could happen usually does and is always hilarious.

The following telling characterization of Earl Radner, chief of security for TUI mega-corporation, is why I love Donald Westlake: 

Anyway, Earl was not a man noted for much sense of humor. A compact, hard-muscled ex-marine probably in his fifties, he had a pouter pigeon's chest and walk -- or strut -- a sand-colored nailbrush mustache, and stiff orangey hair cropped so close to his tan scalp he looked like a drought. His clothing was usually tan and always clean, creased, starched, and worn like a layer of aluminum siding. If he had a home life nobody knew it, and if he had a sorrow in his existence it was probably that this job didn't come with a license to kill.

Drowned Hopes by Donald Westlake

Well, John Dortmunder is certainly over his head in Drowned Hopes by Donald Westlake.

This is the seventh in the series of comic capers starring the unlucky professional burglar and his gang of crazy colleagues. Mr. Westlake has created a most elaborate and complicated puzzle for Dortmunder to solve. 

A former cellmate of John's, Tom Jimson, shows up at John's apartment having just been released from prison. With a promise to split the loot, he enlists John's aid in recovering a cache of $700,000 - the proceeds of an armored car robbery - that, before he went to prison, he had buried in a casket behind the library in Putkin's Corners in upstate New York.

Sounds simple, right? Only trouble is that while Tom was in prison, the town and surrounding area was commandeered by the state and flooded to create a reservoir. So now, not only is the money buried underground, it is also 50 feet under water.

Oh my. Does Mr. Westlake have fun with this one! 

Along with the usual gang members Andy Kelp, Stan Murch, Tiny, May, and Murch's Mom, the characters include:

Seventy-year old, cold as steel Tom Jimson, whose favored way of solving any problem is "Kill 'em!"; Wally, the reclusive geek who plays fantasy save-the-princess type games on his computer; town librarian Myrtle Street who lives on Myrtle Street with her mother Edna in the town near the reservoir; Guffey, a former partner of Tom Jimson's who has lived alone so long he has forgotten his own first name; and, Doug, dive shop owner and wooer of the fair Myrtle.

Usually the action in these fun books takes place in New York City, but now the group has moved to Dudson Falls near the reservoir and Dortmunder and Tom make trips to Oklahoma and South Dakota to retrieve cash for the caper that Tom has stashed there. 

Somehow Mr. Westlake manages to work in to all this a ghost town, an alien spaceship sighting, Raquel Welch movies, a shotgun wedding, the QEII, the left nostril of Abraham Lincoln, and the usual bounty of stolen cars with MD license plates.

Mr. Westlake can twist a plot faster than you can say "Dortmunder". He leaves me laughing all the way. 

A Reading Agenda

Here is my reading agenda for the week:

So Big by Edna Ferber - I was totally captivated with the start of this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. The prose and the characters are like nothing I expected. And, I learned on the first page what the title refers to which was unexpected as well. I am only one chapter (25 pages) into the story, which begins in Chicago around the turn of the 20th century, and focuses on the life of Selina Peake.

Drowned Hopes by Donald Westlake - Master (well, sort of) criminal John Dortmunder has his work cut out for him in this his seventh caper. An ex-cell mate has engaged Dortmunder to help him retrieve a coffin he buried in upstate New York that holds $700,000 in cash - the bounty from a job. The only problem is that now the coffin is not only in the ground but also under 50 feet of water - thanks to a newly formed reservoir. I have High Hopes for this one!

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace - This was a recommendation by Kevin Smokler in his book Practical Classics (here). The titular piece, one of seven non-fiction pieces included in the book, takes a look at Wallace's 'fun' traveling aboard a luxury cruise liner. This will be my first experience reading anything by this almost legendary author who is probably most well-known for his fiction.

The Abandoned Book Pile

In March, I abandoned many books by favorite mystery authors. I am not sure if the problem is with them or with me. Three of the books were the latest in a series and one was the first in the series by an author I am crazy about. 

I whipped bookmarks out almost as quickly as I slipped them between the pages.

I mentioned this to a fellow reader I ran into at the library and he said he quit following many series for this same reason. The author seems to run out of steam.  Or perhaps, suggested a newspaper editor friend, it is the editing...or lack of.

In any case, here were my discards for the month:

The Woman Who Wouldn't Die by Colin Cotterill - This is the ninth in the series about the crotchety coroner in 1970s Laos. There were some pricks of violence that weren't in the other ones and I felt for sure that those foreshadowed scenes I didn't want to read.

A Fatal Winter by G.M. Malliet - This is the second handsome vicar Max Tudor mystery. Maybe I am just over vicars or prefer the ones in the Barbara Pym novels.

Speaking From Among the Bones by Alan Bradley - The fifth in the series about young detective Flavia de Luce. The story jumped from scene to scene with such rapidity that I lost sight of the real mystery.

One of Us is Wrong by Donald Westlake (writing as Samuel Holt) - Westlake wrote a series of four books very anonymously after he was already a successful author to see if his works would be popular if his authorship wasn't known. His publisher was the only other one in on the plan. After book three, though, somehow the truth came out. For that reason, Westlake lost interest in continuing the series about a television detective star who gets involved in real murders. On the other hand, I lost interest in reading this first book in that series. I will stick with his stories starring the hapless professional burglar John Dortmunder.

Have you had a similar experience? What series or authors have you given up on?

The Fugitive Pigeon by Donald Westlake

This is how Donald Westlake describes one of the characters in The Fugitive Pigeon (1965):

Up till then I'd assumed the "Gross" was the man's name, but it was his description. He looked like something that had finally come up out of its cave because it had eaten the last of the phosphorescent little fish in the cold pool at the bottom of the cavern. He looked like something that better keep moving because if it stood still someone would drag it out back and bury it. He looked like a big white sponge with various diseases at work on the inside. He looked like something that couldn't get you if you held a crucifix up in front of you. He looked like the big fat soft white something you might find under a tomato plant leaf on a rainy day with a chill in the air.

Mr. Gross is one of the members of the 'organization' that is out to get Charlie Poole. Because of a misunderstanding, Mr. Gross believes that Charlie, a rather aimless young man who works as bartender in his Uncle Al's bar, is a police informant. Two big guys with guns, Trask and Slade, come in their big black car to take Charlie away. He escapes and spends the next three days on the run trying to find out why these guys are out to get him. He works his way up a chain of gangsters (including his Uncle Al) attempting to determine why he is on the organization's Kill List. 

The action takes Charlie from Queens to Brooklyn to Greenwich Village to Long Island and back again. Sometimes he is chasing around in a black Packard driven by the part-time girlfriend of his school buddy Artie. Sometimes he rides the subway. Sometimes he has to resort to walking on foot. 

Whatever Charlie is doing, Mr. Westlake makes the action funny and outrageous. It all turns out well for Charlie in the end. Not only does he prove his innocence and get his life back, he gets the girl.

Middlebrow Mysteries

Mirabile Dictu writes that she enjoys reading middlebrow fiction. I enjoy reading Middlebrow Mysteries. Nothing too gory, too psychological, or too creepy. No scary Scandinavian sagas for me. I just want my crimes stories to be witty and well-written.

Here is a sampling of a few Middlebrow Mysteries I have recently finished:

Why Me? by Donald Westlake (1983)

Oh dear. Poor John Dortmunder. In this caper, his fifth, he has unwittingly stolen the hugely valuable Byzantine Ruby while burglarizing a jewelry store. He doesn't even realize he has it. But now all of New York City's finest are after him along with the FBI. Not only that, but because the cops are shaking down all the street criminals, they in turn are trying to find out who stole the ruby so they can get the cops off their backs. And then there are the terrorists. Everyone one wants to get hold of him. John and Andy Kelp take to the sewers to avoid grievous bodily harm. Westlake has fun making fun of (at the time) new telephone gadgetry and paints a hilarious picture of the police chief and the two FBI fellows.

Murder in the Mews by Agatha Christie (1937) 

Actually this volume contains four novellas or short stories by Dame Agatha all starring M. Hercule Poirot. In the title tale, a young woman commits suicide. Or was it murder? Only her roommate holds the clue that can help solve the mystery.

In the second, "The Incredible Theft", plans for a bomber plane go missing and M. Poirot is called into action in the middle of the night. It takes some snooping about in the Michaelmas daisies of Lord Charles Mayfield's stately home to discover who stole the missing blueprints.

"Dead Man's Mirror" presents another suicide-or-murder case for the Belgian detective at the country manor house of Sir Gervase Chevenix-Gore. Sir G. summoned Poirot but by the time he arrives, the summoner is dead. This one has a classic "everyone assembled in the study" denouement.

Finally, in "Triangle at Rhodes", a vacationing M. Poirot cannot escape the tragedy of a poisoning and a lovers' triangle. Poor Poirot. He just can't seem to get away from murder.

I am currently reading the sixth Dortmunder novel, Good Behavior. While trying to escape from the police, John literally falls through the roof of a convent. He is rescued by the the nuns who have taken a vow of silence (which allows Westlake to have some fun working out the communication between sisters and burglar).  In lieu of turning him and his burglary tools over to the police, the nuns (whose names all are Mary...Mother Mary Forcible, Sister Mary Serene, Sister Mary Capable, Sister Mary Accord, Sister Mary Vigor...) want Dortmunder to rescue Sister Mary Grace whose wealthy father has kidnapped her from the convent and is having her 'deprogrammed' in his apartment on the 76th floor of his bank building. 

How will Dortmunder ever cope with hidden elevators, bodyguards with guns, and Mother Mary Forcible? 

A Change of Plan

I checked out of the library and was going to start reading the third Vish Puri mystery, The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken by Tarquin Hall. But, I cannot bring myself to do that.

These mysteries, which are quite entertaining, take place in India. Because of the recent cases there of violence against women, I just don't want to be reminded about that country right now 

So, last night at 10, I downloaded from the library (I love this service!), Nobody's Perfect by Donald Westlake. This is the fourth John Dortmunder caper. Dortmunder, professional thief, has been hired by Arnold Chauncey, art collector, to steal one of his paintings so he can collect on the insurance. Chauncey needs the money. So does Dortmunder. He agrees to do the job and gathers his crew in the back room of the O.J. Bar & Grill to talk over the plan. 

Knowing Dortmunder, one plan won't be enough. I wonder what pitfalls Mr. Westlake has in store for the gang this time. I am sure there will be many and I will be laughing all the way.

Just the right book to read at night in bed.

Jimmy the Kid by Donald Westlake

Oh, that Donald Westlake. He is such a card. In the third John Dortmunder escapade, Jimmy the Kid, Andy Kelp convinces the gang to kidnap the 12-year-old son of a wealthy Wall Street broker. The plan they will follow, to hilarious ends, is to be taken from a book, Child Heist, written by one Richard Stark. The joke here of course is that Richard Stark is the pseudonym that Westlake used for his series about the darker Parker, professional criminal.

It seems that Kelp read the book (which in real life does not exist) while he was whiling away some time in jail. Here, he thinks, are the perfect step-by-step snatch instructions and ransom negotiations. 

Dortmunder and his crew refer to chapters in the Parker book - three or four of which are excerpted - and the reader then gets to enjoy how things don't go according to 'script.' It is all quite amusing and Mr. Westlake must have had much fun bringing the it-always-works-out Parker into the world of it-rarely-works-out Dortmunder.

The Hot Rock by Donald Westlake

Let me introduce you to the world of John Dormunder, the hapless professional thief created by author Donald Westlake. He is a brilliant planner of jobs and his band of merry men are rarely violent but always funny.

When we first meet Dortmunder in The Hot Rock, he has just gotten out of prison and his friend Andy Kelp has the perfect job lined up: steal an emerald that is on display at a museum. That sounds like such a simple plot, but things go wrong and wrong again and Dortmunder's plans for the heist get more and more outlandish.

Kelp is Dortmunder's long-time friend and fellow thief and has a much more positive outlook on life. He exasperates Dortmunder sometimes but Kelp is the one who finds the jobs for the gang. Stan Murch is the driver for the crew and spends most of his time telling whoever will listen his route to and from the planning meetings which take place in the back room of a Manhattan bar. The bartender doesn't know anyone by name, only by their drink.

Murch can drive anything and when his character is introduced in The Hot Rock, which came out in 1970, he has just purchased a record of the sounds of the cars zooming around the track at the Indianapolis 500 which he listens to at full volume. It soothes him.

Over the course of the novels, other thieves, safe crackers, and thugs appear to help Dortmunder achieve his ends. These ends are usually a long time in coming as something always goes wrong and plans have to be remade. That is the fun. Just to what lengths will our Mr. Dortmunder go?

I have read the Dortmunder books - there are fourteen of them - over the years and now that my library has them all available as e-books, I am re-acquainting myself with these crazy fellows and the impossible situations they get into.

Westlake also wrote another series under the name of Richard Stark which features  Parker, a hard, professional criminal that is so opposite from Dortmunder. I have only read one of those. The Parker character is a bit dark.

I prefer Westlake when he is at his wittiest.  He is a terrific writer and I dare you to read The Hot Rock and not fall in love with Dortmunder.

On a Desert Isle

Mysteries for a desert island

I do not subscribe to any magazines. I don't want the extra reading material in my house to turn into stacks or to have to recycle or to tempt me to keep because "I might need them some day."

So, once again the library is my friend. Occasionally I breeze through its magazine sections. Usually I am looking for home decor mags - House Beautiful, Architectural Digest, Elle Decor, Traditional Home. But sometimes I like to just randomly pick a couple of ones that focus on something different.

This past week, I pulled out Booklist, the book review magazine published by the American Library Association. I checked out three issues - mystery and crime, historical fiction, and series non-fiction. And I thought I had a long TBR list before. Now I am officially overwhelmed. 

So far, I have only browsed through the pages and pages of reviews of mysteries - for adults and young readers. I was in heaven. 

I was especially intrigued by the Back Page essay written by Bill Ott entitled "Crime on a Desert Island." Here he attempts to choose five mysteries that he would want with him if stranded on a tropical isle along with cases of Dewar's scotch, fresh vegetables, matches, and a good paring knife. He went for style rather than plot.

This of course got me thinking of five mysteries I would want with me. Off the top of my head I thought of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, the unfinished book by Charles Dickens. Since Dickens didn't live to provide a solution, I could spend my days cracking coconuts and thinking of alternate endings. 

Another selection, and this might be cheating but it's my list, would be a box set of the fourteen John Dortmunder mysteries by Donald Westlake. If there isn't a boxed set, there should be. The plots are as intriguing as the characters and dialogue. Those would keep me entertained through many a tropical storm. 

That leaves three more to choose and I will have to give them some thought.

How about you? Most desert island lists are mixed fiction and non-fiction. I like just getting to choose mysteries.