The Thin Red Line

Sometimes, it seems to me, Rita Mae Brown is simply out to taunt me.  It was if she had somehow heard (or perhaps read) my wish that she write again about the old Runnymeade gang, and give us a break from all those mysteries, which Brown has been cranking out exclusively of late.  So I was initially thrilled when I spotted Ms. Brown’s name in the New Fiction stacks.  But I was struck immediately at what a very small book it is, a mere 102  four by five inch pages.  A longish short story or a very brief novella,  the entire action takes place in a single August day in 1952.  Julia (Juts) and her sister Louise  (Wheezie) Hunesnemeir, the former’s daughter, Nicole (Nickel) and the latter’s orpahaned grandson, Leroy,  are the only characters.

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When I first started this blog I remember hanging out on Blog Catalog and it always seemed I was talking to people who were facing writers block or unable to think of topics to post about and generally struggling to regularly publish a blog.    And I would look at the huge stack of books on my couch and think to myself, ‘at least I don’t have _that_ problem.

And let me say right off that my stack of books is as tall as ever,  so I can’t really use that as an excuse for my recent lack of posts.   Honestly I don’t know why I have been spending my time lately playing games and watching television and even reading books rather than posting and promoting my blog.   Sometimes, I suspect, you just need a mental break.  Having recharged my inner batteries I hope to on Monday resume my five posts per week and thought I would ease back into things by posting today about three great books I’ve read during my hiatus.

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OK.   So first off I got confess that now that I am officially middle aged I don’t actually ride roller coasters anymore.   But  Joel was a huge Disney fan and I have been to Disneyland as an adult an inordinate number of times for a non parent.   And time was that I loved the roller coasters most of all and always looked forward to these Southern California trips.  And it was that younger me that was so entranced by the cover of Richard Barth’s novel Jumper, A Mystery.

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Happy Monday!   Starting off the week with a Monday Mystery.    In Rita Mae Brown’s last Mrs. Murphy (my review) the mystery formula was marred by the use of the issue of illegal immigration to make political points that seemed distasteful and out of place in one of my favorite mystery series.    So I was a bit anxious on discovering that the new Mrs. Murphy story is framed around the even more volatile issue of abortion,  but this time out Ms. Brown has produced a highly entertaining page turner that I literally read in one sitting.   Couldn’t put it down.

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La Grande, Oregon is not a very exciting place. I don’t remember just why my late partner, Joel, and I were in town that night, although we visited it many times in the course of exploring every corner of Oregon for pleasure and to research a guide book we never got around to writing. But I vividly remember La Grande as the place where I first encountered Diane Mott Davidson’s series of mystery books about Goldy Schulz, a Tough Cookie who’s a caterer married to a homicide detective in Aspen Meadow, a suburb of Denver, Colorado. I had wandered into the La Grande Safeway late one evening to pick up a few things, including something to read since I’d finished reading everything I’d brought with me on the trip.

Sticks & Scones proved to be an excellent choice. A fairly standard genre mystery in a blend of the amateur detective and police procedural varieties, the story of Goldy and her Goldilock’s Catering Company (Where Everything Is Just Right!!) catering a series of events at nearby Hyde Castle, an actual castle from Scotland that rich owners with more money than sense have had shipped to and re-assembled brick by brick in Aspen Meadow, is a tasty adventure.

In every volume of Goldy’s adventures the menu for the important party or banquet where, inevitably, a murder sends party plans askew, is lovingly rendered on the first page of the book and recipes for these and other dishes are either included periodically throughout the text at a point when that particular dish is mentioned in the earlier volumes or in more recent volumes in an appendix after the novel.

And what recipes! Scaled for the home cook and with specific information about ingredients and sources for anything you can’t find at your nearest supermarket, Goldy’s recipes always make my mouth water. I won’t say exactly that reading Davidson’s books causes weight gain in and of itself, but if reading about Goldy’s cooking doesn’t make you hungry and send you straight to the kitchen to whip something up, I will say that you don’t care much about cooking delicious food.

As Goldy and her son, Arch– a troubled pre-teen suffering through his parents divorce in the early books who comes into his own young manhood as the series progresses, along with catering assistant Julian, best-friend and local gossip queen Marla serve up the most sumptuous vittles before inevitably stumbling upon a murder at a major party, it provides a framework that Davidson uses very well to spin her tales of murder investigations and creme brulees and lots and lots of cookies and cappucinos.

So it is with great pleasure that I announce here on The Thin Red Line that Davidson’s latest Goldy titled Sweet Revenge is now available at a library near you. That the murder in this one takes place at the local library, where Goldy has been hired to cater an employee breakfast, makes this one especially dear to me. I’ve only just started to read but am as always quickly drawn into the world of fancy parties, Episcopal church women’s gossip and fast-paced adventure Davidson is renowned for. So if you are a foodie or a mystery lover who appreciates good suspense novels, do yourself a favor and head to the mystery stacks and check out Diane Mott Davidson.

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This post should make you afraid. Very afraid. Although if you are middle-aged or elderly AND white AND rich AND do not have children, you might be able to safely ignore it. Dale C. Carson is a former Miami police officer, former FBI agent and currently a criminal defense attorney. In Arrest-Proof Yourself he paints a very frightening picture of the current state of the criminal justice system, although not for the sorts of reasons you might expect.

According to Carson, violent and serious crime is down substantially due to mandatory sentencing laws such as ‘three strikes’ and police now actively enforce many laws that at one time would have been over-looked. Further he states that since the implementation of federalized criminal records databases the fact of an arrest, for anything, even if the charges are subsequently dismissed or you are acquitted of any wrong doing will follow you for life, no matter where you go. Where in an earlier era it would have been possible to get a clean start by moving away from the location where your criminal record remained on paper in a filing cabinet, you may find your career and other life opportunities severely restricted by the on-line arrest record that many employers will be able to view.

Carson goes on to state that while the police do a good job of catching serious criminals, they spend the vast bulk of their time enforcing misdemeanor laws, most often arresting poor and minority miscreants who pose no threat to the society and who’s minor mis-deeds would be more appropriately and economically handled as civil matters. He argues that this constant churning of the poor through the criminal justice system, which is largely paid for by the families of those arrested in the form of bail, attorney’s fees, fines and probation fees is the major reason for the persistence of poverty.

The bulk of the book is devoted to very specific advise on how to avoid contact with the police and what to say, do and not do if you do have contact with the police in order to minimize your chances of be arrested. Much of the advise is common sense and seemed both reasonable and obvious to me– drive the speed limit, don’t carry drugs, dress appropriately; if contacted by the police provide your name and offer your ID and then SHUT UP. Do not consent to a search of your vehicle.

Other parts of the advice seemed absurd but may in fact be appropriate: if you have a teenager who drives, Carson advises you to remove the back seat of the car, have the trunk lid welded shut and fill the glove compartment, cup holders, map holders and any other nooks and crannies in which drugs or other contraband might be hidden with a hardening foam and placing in the car a signed affidavit stating that you have altered the car in this way to insure that no drugs or contraband may be hidden in it and authorizing police to search the car, remove the foam and pop the trunk should they suspect that drugs or other contraband are hidden in the car. This struck me as way over the top, but honesty I don’t know. Fearfully Recommended.

In sharp contrast to the current day manual for surviving the criminal justice system that reads like a dystopian fantasy, today’s other book selection paints a very different picture of police work from an earlier era. Published in 1956, Cop Hater is the first of the 87th Precinct novels by Ed McBain (a pseudonym for Evan Hunter). This series revolves around the police detectives in a particular precinct in an un-named fictitious city which is evocative of New York. The series hook is that the precinct itself is the central character with different officers taking the lead roles in each volume and stepping into the background but still visible in other installments. The wildly successful series is up to 50 books at this writing with additional volumes forthcoming.

A fairly standard mystery in the standard police procedural format, the principle appeal of the book to me was the 1950’s milieu and the older, less technological workings of the investigations of genuine bad guys and the absence of the of the excessively bureaucratic harassment and abuse of harmless miscreants that figured so prominently in the Carson book. Recommended.

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Roux The Day is one of a series of seven Gourmet Detective mysteries by Peter King. The "Gourmet Detective" is a London-based foodie who works for chefs finding rare ingredients, recipes and substitutions. While on another case in Los Angeles he receives a telephone from a New Orleans attorney and agrees to stop over in The Big Easy on his way home to assist in authenticating and purchasing a "chef’s book"– a book of recipes and menu information for a particular restaurant which is up for auction in a local charity event.

The GD arrives at the auction to find that the book has already been sold, he is told to a New Orleans bookshop owner. The GD proceeds to the bookshop in hopes of getting the book, only to find a recently deceased man at the shop owner’s desk. The lawyer who hired him indicates that obtaining the book is paramount and offers a huge bonus if the book can be produced and authenticated. The GD is then "kidnapped" by a group of women chefs who call themselves "The Wiches" (for Women In Culinary & Hotel Employment).

As promising as the premise was, and much as I enjoy reading about New Orleans and the food there, I found this book difficult to get into. Though it is less than 250 pages it took me over a month of fits and starts. While the author seems to have an encyclopedic knowledge of gastronomy, New Orleans seems to be just another backdrop for the protagonist to be presented against. And while there was much local trivia incorporated into the text, it failed to credibly draw up the city for me. I doubt I will try any of the other GD mysteries. (I also find it annoying that the gentleman’s name is never mentioned, forcing me to use the silly "Gourmet Detective" title over and over.

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I found this latest installment in Rita Mae Brown’s Mrs. Murphy series a bit of a mixed bag. The newly re-married Harry and Fair (Mary Minor and Pharamond) Haristeen have driven to Kentucky for a major horse show. The usual Crozet gang do not appear at all this time out, more or less doubling the number of new characters to be introduced in the first few chapters. I found the book difficult to get into and the large cast of strangers tough to get a handle on.

Once the first murder occurs, the pace does pick up. Those who have read the earlier Mrs. Murphy titles or especially Brown’s fox hunting mysteries will be right at home in the horse show milieu and the book is in many ways Brown’s usual mystery offering.

A bit more than half way into the book, the INS conducts a raid on the horse show, arresting many of the illegal immigrants who work for the stables and trainers and this was where I started to really have trouble. I have been a fan of Rita Mae Brown’s books for more than twenty years now. When she avoids politics and does fiction, she can be brilliant and wonderful but I don’t think I will ever understand where this woman is coming from politically. When she talks about sexuality and individual rights she sounds like a capital L Liberal. But when the topic is taxation or property she seems to become a capital R Republican.

And then this issue of illegal immigration seems to re-draw these lines rather strangely, and to a large extent I find myself cast uncomfortably on the side of the freepers.

I believe that illegal immigrants depress wages for all Americans and utterly reject the argument that we must have illegal immigrants because there are so many jobs that American’s just won’t do. (It seems to me that argument is really an insistence on being allowed to have illegal immigrants so as not to be forced to provide the level of wages, benefits and working conditions most Americans would likely demand.) Certainly, I believe that America should continue to welcome immigrants, that we should develop a fair process for rationing the privilege of coming here that takes into account both the needs of business for additional labor and the limits of our resources to care for, succor and support new arrivals, while actively and effectively enforcing our immigration laws, primarily through stiff financial and criminal penalties for those who employ illegals.

The "compromise" immigration reform currently being debated in Washington does none of this.

After the INS raid, which Brown’s characters universally and bitterly scorn, using the argument above along with a disingenuous paean to the skills and work ethics of the laborers in question, the story picks up again along the usual lines and in the end it is revealed that the murder was committed to silence a partner in an immigrant smuggling scheme whose increasingly cold feet threatened to expose the deal.

Lately it seems the only writing Ms. Brown does are these Mrs. Murphy and foxhunting mysteries. I found myself really wishing she would come out with another of her wonderful non-genre novels and that she had refrained from inserting one of the current hot button political issues into her usual mystery formula.

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