Review: The Case and the Girl by Randall Parrish

by Mary

Captain Matthew West has just been honourably discharged from the army after twice being wounded during l8 months of service in France during World War I. Feeling restless and not yet ready to return to civilian work, he is browsing a paper at his club and decides to answer a personal ad running thus:

"Wanted: Young man of education and daring for service involving some personal peril. Good pay, and unusual reward if successful. May have to leave city. Purpose disclosed only in personal interview."

As it transpires, truth in advertising certainly applies to the warning.

Instructed to bring his evening clothes -- and a good job he has them! -- he is soon off to a rendezvous with orphaned heiress Natalie Coolidge. She does not explain what task she requires him to undertake but Captain West agrees to help her even so, and is whirled off in her limo to the family mansion, where he is astonished to be introduced to the house guests as her fiance.

One of those in attendance is Natalie's uncle and guardian Percival Coolidge, and the two men dislike each other on sight -- in fact, Uncle Percy accuses Captain West of being a fortune hunter, the cad. It is not until next morning that the gallant captain is able to have a private chat with Natalie and learns someone is impersonating her but nobody believes her story because the responsible party is so like her she fools even Natalie's friends, not to mention the servants and bank clerks who know her well.

Is Natalie telling the truth, mistaken, or demented? Well, despite doubts at times, natural enough in the circumstances, West takes it on faith and agrees to try to solve the mystery. There are a couple of odd happenings, statements made don't quite check out, and then a death occurs and West is plunged into an adventure with enough twists and turns to make a scriptwriter swoon. The detective work is partly deductive and partly wearing out shoe leather and when it comes to action, West usually wipes the floor with his opponents, yet in a manner that shows he is not a super hero unlike some modern protagonists we might mention.

My verdict: Apart from the fact Captain West is a bit slow on the uptake at times -- at one point I was muttering *don't* go in there, usually reserved for women who are alone in the house and yet insist on going to investigate odd noises in the cellar after both the phone and power mysteriously fail -- this was a rollicking read and kept the interest to the end. I particularly admired a sequence towards the close of the novel, in which West and Natalie are trapped in...but no, I will not ruin the suspense although I will say it gave me the creeping heebie-jeebies.

Etext: The Case and the Girl by Randall Parrish

Cool as a Colander

by Mary

The current heatwave in many parts of the country has doubtless provided a bonanza in the form of increased sales of ice cream, soft drinks, and sun tan oil. Not to mention calamine lotion, that pink flaky stuff we wore during the hotter stretches of English summers, which despite that lying jade Dame Rumour's contention to the contrary came along now and then.

During those warm spells, since we lived in an industrial area with an abundance of concreted over back yards and no gardens -- the nearest greenery to be found was local cemeteries or parks and living in the city haymaking was not an option when the sun shone -- the heat was magnified something awful. It was excellent for drying the Monday wash strung across the back lane but us thin-blooded locals sometimes found it hard to cope with higher than usual temperatures.

We sometimes went to the coast on sunny summer Sundays, but that was not always possible. The swimming baths part of the baths and wash house not far from our street were not free, and the only other body of water near us -- across Scotswood Road at the bottom of our street in fact -- was the River Tyne. Nobody with any sense set foot in it, given at the time if anyone fell in a certain nasty procedure involving the stomach was routine treatment because of the filthy state of the water.

Aside: cleaning-up efforts have progressed very well since then as I hear salmon have returned to spawn upriver. They must have long ancestral memories or perhaps enough of them got through the various connurbations along the river to keep the Tyne tribe alive.

But to get back to what I was saying, discomfort being the mother of invention, one day my younger sister and I devised a cooling method which these days would be called green.

We lived in an upstairs flat in a terraced street, and so steps led down from the back door into our back yard. If any subscribers have seen Get Carter, they've seen this type of housing in the sequence with the hearse in the back lane, except our back steps were open to the sky rather than roofed in.

Our brainwave was to hook up a hosepipe -- it's an enduring mystery why we even had one, since there was nothing to water and no buggy to wash -- to the cold tap in the kitchen. In passing let me mention that this was the only plumbing provided in the flat until we got a water heater. The traditional usual offices were represented by the loo in the back yard although in all fairness to the landlord, the Victorian vintage clothes boiling copper was still in the scullery although in our time it was only used as a meeting place for black beetles.

Well, we tied a broom to the top of the outside staircase and from the broom suspended a colander swinging from three bits of string. Then we tied the hosepipe into the colander, turned on the cold tap, et voila, a shower arrangement was created. We donned our scratchy one-piece black wool bathing suits and took turns standing under the cool water, our feet on sunwarmed concrete.

As the neighbours may well have said, by, but those bairns thought up a canny plan.

Now when Eric says he feels too hot, I'm not being rude when I tell him to stick his head under the cold tap.

A colander is optional.

Review: The Confession by Mary Roberts Rinehart

by Mary

Once again Mary Roberts Rinehart gives us a female protagonist as narrator, but this time in a work yards away from her more frothy concoctions.

Attended by servant Maggie and cook Delia, Miss Agnes Blakiston takes a house for the summer at Benton Station. As the story opens, she is grilling the agent handling the transaction and remarks she finds the presence of three bathrooms somewhat suspicious, given its owner Miss Emily Benton, now in her late 60s, usually lives there with only two servants. However, Miss Benton has made it plain she wishes the house rented out for the summer and the new plumbing is to make the house more attractive to a prospective tenant, which also explains the "[u]nbelievably cheap" rent.

The middle-aged Miss Blakiston took the house anticipating visits from young relatives but these do not occur for various reasons. Thus at the end of June she writes Miss Benton saying she will not need the house, enclosing a cheque to cover the agreed upon rental amount. Miss Blakiston had some previous contact with the Bentons thirty years before and knows it is a highly regarded family once headed by the Revd Thaddeus Benton, father of Miss Emily. There was also Carlo, a now deceased son summed up in Miss Blakiston's narration as "hardly bearing out the Benton traditions of solidity and rectitude". Now only Miss Benton is alive, and she pleads with Miss Blakiston to stay for the summer.

Needless to say, Miss Blakiston agrees, although she begins to regret her change of heart when strange things begin to happen. The telephone rings at night but no one is there when it is answered, and on one or two mornings it is found on the floor. This frightens the three residents of the rented house to such an extent that Miss Blakiston develops an aversion to going anywhere near the back of the hall where the telephone stand is situated.

Certain signs show there is a nocturnal visitor creeping about the house. Is Miss Blakiston sleepwalking or are her nerves disordered and she is mistaken in believing someone unknown is entering the house during the night?

But then a confession to murder is discovered and Miss Blakiston decides to see if she can unravel the truth of the matter.

My verdict: The Confession is a novel which nowadays would no doubt be described as a psychological study of a crime and its after effects. I would not describe it as a thriller because investigation and revelation occur at a stately pace in keeping with its country setting and rural society, but it certainly has noir underpinnings. The reason for the crime is convincing, as is that for the confession of the title, and the reader may well ponder on both after completing the novel.

Etext: The Confession by Mary Roberts Rinehart

Our Handmade Website

by Eric

It's axiomatic that writers must have websites. When Mary and I saw our first novel, One for Sorrow published in 1999 we already possessed a website, left over from the mid-nineties when it was axiomatic that everyone on the Internet must have what was then called a homepage. I simply added a book cover and some reviews to turn our homepage into the required authors' page. With a few fresh coats of html paint it remains our rambling home on the web today. Visitors intrepid enough to explore dusty corridors and open creaking doors can find pages untouched in more than twenty years.

In 1995 html seemed like magic. By keyboarding simple bits of gobbledegook even a middle-aged Liberal Arts major like me could arrange images and words on a page floating out there in cyberspace for all the world to see. Who would have guessed how useful those "<" and ">" keys would turn out to be?

Do-it-yourself simplicity doesn't last. Soon frames came along and javascript. Today .css (cascading style sheets for those at my level of sophistication) look more like programming language than the html I learned to write. No doubt, a site designed by an expert looks a lot slicker and probably works a little better than one handcoded in nineties html by an amateur.

I say expertly produced sites work only a little better because I am a believer in content and it is the words and images that contain the content, not the design. But not everyone thinks like me, and I suspect that poor or old fashioned or amateurish design discourages many people from looking at content.

All this occurred to me recently when I decided our website should be spruced up prior to the release of Murder in Megara In October and The Guardian Stones in January. For several days I studied .css and decided that unless I were willing to take a course in it (which I'm not) my version of a .css site would be no improvement on the crude html we already have. So I tidied up a bit, as much as it is possible to tidy up html written in 1995 by someone who barely knew what he was doing.

But why not hire a professional? How many authors produce and maintain their own web pages? Not many, as far as I can tell.

We're not trying to pinch pennies. It's just that twenty years ago I loved the idea that anyone could put up their own web pages, without assistance, and I still feel that way. And why interpose a professional web master between ourselves and readers? Heck, we've kept plenty of personal essays on the site, most written long before we had mystery novels published. Do they give the site an amateur feel? I doubt they have any value from a marketing point of view.

Maybe our site is just my small revolt against the obsession with slick presentation and the rush to appear more professional than thou. Yes, I prefer our books -- which people pay for -- to be produced in a professional manner. But can't we meet readers on the Internet more informally?

Mary and I hope our website might be of more interest to some readers than the typical author's site. If nothing else it's a museum quality example of Grandma Moses style html circa 1995, still crammed with old stuff, an electronic attic. Who doesn't like to rummage through an attic?

Our Website

Review: The Bittermeads Mystery by E. R. Punshon

by Mary

The Bittermeads Mystery gets off to a lively start with protagonist Robert Dunn eluding pursuit after a donnybrook (or should I say a Dunnybrook?) with a man he was following through a wood.

Dunn continues his nocturnal activities by sloping along to Bittermeads, the titular house, where he finds a burglary in progress. Seizing the day, or rather night, Dunn knocks the burglar out and after exchanging clothing with the unconscious man (subsequently concealed on the village common opposite the house) he enters the dwelling hoping to be discovered. An unusual ambition, you may say, but since a burglar is a shady sort he hopes to be invited to join the murky band associated with Bittermeads. His reasoning is he will not be turned him over to the police as the residents don't want attention drawn to the house. In this way he hopes to find out what has happened to his old chum Charley Wright, who was romantically involved with Ella Cayley, the daughter of the house, but has disappeared. He has another reason for his interest in joining the enemy camp, but it is not revealed until some way into the narrative.

The only people at home are Ella and her ailing mother and after tying Ella up and promising not to disturb her mother, Dunn explores the house -- only to find the murdered Charley in a packing case in an attic.

Ella's stepfather, Deede Dawson, returns home and nabs Dunn but decides to employ him as chauffeur and gardener -- not an action one would expect of an honest man. Dunn's first task is to finish nailing down the lid of the packing case without revealing he knows what is in it. But then Ella takes the packing case away in a car, thus removing the only evidence he can produce to launch a police investigation.

Then there is another murder as the plot thickens up in satisfactory fashion.

My verdict: The two matters Dunn is investigating have no immediate apparent link but ultimately are shown to be intertwined. Although the close reader may well deduce a certain hidden identity and the name of the person masterminding the mayhem, it will likely not be until fairly late in the book. The action gallops along and we have an unusual look at the romantic agony of a male protagonist as well as his internal musings as the plot develops. Although it is a fast, light read there are noir underpinnings and the whole is resolved with a satisfactory comeuppance for the egregious villain of the piece.

Etext: The Bittermeads Mystery

Waiting for that First Review

by Eric

Did you hear the huge sigh of relief coming from Casa Maywrite? It blew squirrels out of the pine trees at the end of the yard. The first review of Murder in Megara is just in from Kirkus Reviews and it's excellent.

"...combines historical detail with a cerebral mystery." -- Kirkus Reviews, July 15.

Thank Mithras for that, as our detrective, John, might say.

No matter how many books they've had published, regardless of good reviews in the past, the moment advance reading copies go out for review, authors are seized by the chilling certainty that the new book will not be liked by anyone. No, not even one reader. Not even one reviewer. Not a single person on the face of the planet. Well, at least that's the way this co-author feels. I can't speak for Mary.

After months of writing and revision, waiting for a reaction is agonizing. Like performing on stage and not knowing whether the audience will applaud or boo until weeks later.

I miss the days when I could show my handwritten literary efforts -- with full color crayola illustrations in a first edition printing of one -- to my parents without fear of a negative response.

True, my dad sometimes told me what he told his school students: "Interesting...." Meaning he didn't like it but didn't want to say so.

Mary and I are particuarly pleased to get a good review from Kirkus since when they don't like a book they usually have a lot different way of expressing it than "interesting."

So finally we can relax.

But wait! What if the Kirkus reviewer was the only person in the whole world who likes Murder in Megara? Which, now that I think of it, is almost surely the case!

Now we're on pins and needles anxiously awaiting the second review. Or I am. Mary, maybe not. She must be on pins though, surely, even if not needles too. But don't take my word for it.

Read the whole Kirkus review

Space Exploration: Are Humans Necessary?

by Eric

Mary and I don't write science fiction but we're still excitedly awaiting pictures from New Horizons' Mars flyby.

As an sf reader during my youth I was thrilled with the manned space program leading up the moon landing but manned exploration of the solar system hasn't gone the way a lot of us expected back in the sixties.

We were supposed to be building bases on Mars by now. That's what I imagined, more than fifty years ago, when I watched Alan Shephard's small hop into space on my family's first color television set. Today the manned space program is older than television was back then and where are we? Still floating around in earth orbit and not even doing that very well.

On the other hand, the saga of the Mars rovers and unmanned missions to the planets and asteroids has been just as exciting as manned flights and probably contributed more to scientific knowledge.

I used to think manned space exploration was vital but technology has changed my mind. It is grossly expensive, and still unsafe, to send people physically into the hostile environment beyond our planet. Given advances in computers and robotics, what is the point? Man's genius isn't what he can do with his bare hands but with tools. A human being can't scoop up Martian earth in his hand anyway. What's the difference if a man wields a shovel held by the gloves of a spacesuit encasing his hands or orders a robotic shovel to move by sending an electronic command? A Mars rover is just a shovel with a very long handle.

The only real limiting factor in unmanned space exploration would seem to be the time it takes for distant sensors to send their findings back to the human operator and the operator's response to creep back at lightspeed. How often would a catastrophic emergency arise that could not be coped with by computer intelligence, but would be solvable, by human intervention, within a few minutes? I would think in the hostile environment of space, where a spacefarer is utterly dependent on machinery and computers, such a situation would be unlikely to ever occur.

So I'm content for future space explorers to depend on tools. I can't say I'd achieve more if I tried to write without wearing my eyeglasses, let alone trashed my computer, and eschewed a typewriter, or a pencil. Part of our genius is that we invent tools to extend our abilities. .