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Steps to the Gallows, by Edward Marston
Peter and Paul Skillen, twin brothers who run a shooting, archery and boxing gallery in London.
Charlotte, Peter's wife
Gully Ackford, owner of the gallery and former soldier
Micah Yeomans, a runner with the police
This is a detective story taking place in and around London, not really sure of the time frame, but they are still riding horses and have coaches and carriages. There is no mention of the 'horseless carriage' so before 1900 at least. Leo Paige has come to a shooting gallery to hire a body guard, as he knows his life is in danger. Someone has been following him for the last few days and because of his career of creating caricatures of the powerful in government, he has made many enemies among politicians and the wealthy. When he enters the gallery he sees his former comrade in arms, Gully Ackford, not realizing that Gully is the owner of the establishment. Gully quickly assigns a bodyguard to follow Leo but, alas, it is of no avail, and Leo dies later that day, strangled in his apartment which is then set on fire, hoping to destroy all of Leo's work along with the body. The bodyguard that has been sent to trail Leo is himself attacked and left for dead so the brothers Skillen realize that two men are involved in the murder of Leo. The Skillen brothers, who work with Gully at the gallery vow to outdo the runners, headed by Micah Yeomans and find the murderer of their friend. Peter and Paul Skillen are twins so identical very few people can tell them apart, although their personalities are almost opposite. This leads to a lot mistaken identity and is double trouble for Micah Yeomans. Leo had been publishing a magazine disclosing some of the foibles and underhanded dealings of those in government, but the Penny Tax is enacted putting the price of his publication out of reach and so he closes down the venture. But he still works with an illustrator, known only as Virgo, creating caricatures of those in power, and Leo supplies the witticisms. His work is sold in a shop owned by a formidable woman, Diane, who now becomes the next target for whoever has killed Leo. Likely suspects include a member of parliament, a wealthy business man and a doctor. All have felt the brunt of Leo and Virgo's scathing criticism.
This is a fairly simple plot with a lot of good natured competition between the two groups, the Skillens and the crew at the gallery, and the runners headed by Micah Yeomans working for the police. I won't give away who wins but it's an enjoyable read.
Quiet Neighbors, by Catriona McPherson
Jude, the main character, a librarian who is on the run from what she believes is the accidental death of her ex-husband's new girlfriend which she is certain will cause her to be put on trial for murder
Lowell Glen, the older man who owns a book store in Wigtown, Scotland, where Jude ends up after she flees the scene of the accident
Eddy Preston, Lowell's daughter whom he had no knowledge of until she shows up unannounced on his doorstep the same week that Jude arrives, who is eight months pregnant
T. Jolly, deceased, who left clues to who committed several murders before he died
Lowland Glen bookstore, owned by Lowell Glen, but in sad shape until Jude's arrival, She is on the high end of obsessive compulsive and cannot help herself from tidying.
"Who runs away to a bookshop?" But that is exactly what 'Jude' does when her world collapses after the death of both her parents. A horrible accident takes both their lives and after the funeral Jude flees to an old book store in Wigtown, Scotland she had visited with her husband during happier times. By now she's divorced and her ex is married to a co-worker he had been seeing during her marriage. When she arrives at the book store, Lowell Glen immediately remembers her and has in fact saved a book she had been looking for in a drawer until her return. She shows up at the door of Lowland Glen bookshop exhausted and emotionally broken, having fled London with nothing but the clothes on her back, her passport and a small mount of cash. She is afraid of using her credit cards, for fear that the police are looking for her and will arrive to take her away if she so much as swipes the magnetic strip. We don't know why the police are looking for her until much later in the story. But Lowell takes her in, his old-fashioned gentleman style encouraging her to rest at his house until she feels better. The small town seems perfectly safe and Jude takes him up on his offer. Soon, she is working at the bookshop, and being a librarian with obsessive compulsive disorder, she is almost in heaven creating order out of the towering stacks of books, cleaning each one as she goes. Within a few days, more drama comes to the quiet little shop in the form of a teenage daughter that Lowell never knew he had. Eddy Preston's mother Miranda has just died after a long illness and Eddy is eight months pregnant. She tells Lowell and Jude that the baby is Lowell's grandchild and the reader gets the impression that Eddy's story is calculated to force Lowell into taking her in. Not knowing how kind and mannerly Lowell is she didn't need any story at all, merely having her show up was enough for him to be smitten with her. He remembers a night eighteen years ago when she could possibly have been conceived and takes it on trust that she's his own daughter. But Jude sees some cracks in the story and doubts that Eddy is even really pregnant, what with the false wombs available now days. When Eddy refuses to have the baby at the hospital and demands that it be born at Lowell's family home, Jamaica House, where she herself was conceived, Jude's suspicions grow. But soon Eddy has figured out who Jude really is and the two of them form a pact of secrecy.
Once Eddy arrives she takes over the upstairs bedrooms that Jude had tidied up for herself, but Lowell offers her an old cottage at the edge of a graveyard, where T. Jolly had lived out his final years. There she finds some notes written in the back of books he had ordered for his membership in a local book club. It turns out there had been some scandal involved with Lowell's father, the local doctor and several of his patients before he died, but the clues are scattered now, buried in the back of the bookshop in books relegated to the dead room which contained dozens of bags of books donated by the community. As Eddy's due date grows nearer strange happenings occur. Jude receives ominous messages and the cottage is set on fire. The clues almost add up but Jude still needs to search out the final notes in one of the book club entries which still lies hidden somewhere in the bookshop.
An enjoyable read with good characters will keep you guessing.
Miss Julia Inherits a Mess, by Ann B. Ross
Miss Julia, whose first husband left all of his considerable wealth to his illegitimate teenage son Lloyd upon his death
Lillian, Miss Julia's housekeeper and friend
Mattie Freeman, the deceased
If I were not from the South I most likely would not enjoy these little mystery novels as much as I do, but being from there myself, they are a lot of fun to read. Serious goings on occur, but even though death and intrigue are a part of each and every one of the books, the tone is light and upbeat. Miss Julia and Lillian or Etta Mae are usually caught outside in the middle of the night doing some kind of breaking and entering, just to find evidence of course. Miss Julia is on her second marriage, a happy affair after the miserable experience of her first, to a husband who never cared and a life that while offering much in the way of financial security, was a cold and loveless one for the most part. Her no-count first husband tries to leave his all to a son Miss Julia knew nothing about, but the courts decide in her favor and split the will. And Miss Julia, just to show the kind of girl she is, becomes close friends not only with the boy, but with her former husband's mistress as well. All of this is background to all of the stories in the series.
In this episode, a member of Miss Julia's social circle, an old maid named Mattie Freeman, is in the hospital but before you know it, the lady dies and Miss Julia is notified that she is named as the executor of the will, which is surprising because Miss Julia was not that close and in fact did not particularly care for Mattie Freeman at all. Not wanting to shirk her Christian duty, she begins the task of gathering the assets, what little there are, and disposing of them so that she can make the distributions stipulated in the will. The question is, will there be enough to go around. Of course, several who find out they are named are at the door with hands out, the pastor of the Presbyterian church chief among them, for goodness sakes, the air conditioner has gone out and they need that money to keep from baking in the summer heat in North Carolina. To make matters worse, a long lost nephew turns up, whom no one has ever seen or heard of before and tries to gain access to Mattie's apartment. Miss Julia isn't having any of that until she finds out just who this guy is, but despite her best efforts, the apartment is broken into and some valuable items go missing.
These are fun, easy books to read and are well done. No loose strings hanging at the end in this series and you can always count on Lillian to give some good sound advice and Miss Julia usually not to take it.
Drood, by Dan Simmons
'Drood', caught my eye as it was intended to do. The author well knew that the single word, part of the title of Charles Dickens' last, alas unfinished novel, would compel me to reach for it and open its cover. And while the book is about this mysterious character that so many of us will forever remain curious about, it is much more about the narrator, Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens. Collins is a fellow writer who was popular during the Victorian period about which he writes. Wilkie Collins' brother Charley was married to one of Dickens' daughters, Katey and the two men were very close for many years. The story starts with the Staplehurst train accident which Charles Dickens barely survived in 1865. According to the Collins, this is where Dickens first encountered Mr. Drood, a caped figure of hideous appearance, with lidless eyes and mere slits where the nose should be. Dickens goes among the injured, dispensing brandy and carrying water, but Drood is also there, possibly trying to hypnotize the injured. Drood disappears but Dickens seems to be fascinated by him and engages Wilkie to pursue him into the great underground sewers of London. He enlists the help of Inspector Fields, who considers Drood to be the sinister mastermind behind dozens, if not hundreds, of unsolved murders in London over the past few decades. Fields assigns a working detective, Hibbett, a huge bear of a man armed with loaded pistol, to accompany the two writers into the seedy parts of the city. They do find Drood, or he finds them, it's difficult to say which. Collins is becoming more and more addicted to laudanum, an alcohol drink with ten percent opium mixed into it which he uses for pain from gout. This substance was widely prescribed during the Victorian era for all sorts of maladies. Dickens used it at times as well. Collins describes his increasing use of the drug and when the effects no longer dull his pain he turns to the opium dens first discovered on his jaunts through the Great Oven into the underground with Dickens, in pursuit of Drood.
I won't tell more of the story in case you want to read it for yourself. Dickens' love affair with actress Ellen Ternan, his estranged wife Catherine, his children, are all there. Collins himself had an unusual family life, living with Caroline and her daughter but having children with another woman at the same time, neither of whom he ever married. If you are a Dickens fan, then you will enjoy it, if not, I would think it might be tiresome. The book is long, over 700 pages, and it's hard to tell if what Wilkie is saying is the truth, or if it is some wild opium-induced fantasy. Mesmerism, which Charles Dickens was a follower and practitioner of, plays into the story as well. With all of these variables it's hard to tell sometimes if Collins' narrative is dream, fantasy, or reality. But it's very well done and worth the endeavor. I'm not sure how much of the Drood character as portrayed by Simmons is based on Dickens' ideas or entirely made up. Either way the book is fascinating for those Dickens readers who have gone beyond the more popular works like Great Expectations and Oliver Twist to the later ones David Copperfield and Our Mutual Friend.
Don't Believe a Word, by Patricia McDonald
Eden Radley, an editor for a publishing house in New York City, whose Mother Tara, has committed suicide after murdering her son, Eden's half-brother Jeremy, who has an incurable disease.
Flynn Darby, the father of Jeremy and husband of Tara, and an author
Hugh Radley, Eden's father
Eden Radley does not have a good relationship with her mother, Tara. Eden has never forgiven Tara for abandoning her and her father and marrying her 'soulmate', Flynn Darby when Eden is still a young girl. After her new marriage Tara has a child, a buy named Jeremy who sadly is afflicted with a fatal disease. The family moves to Cleveland so that Jeremy can receive treatment from a renowned doctor there. But Eden receives the news that her mother has killed her son and taken her own life at the family's home, while the father was out of town. Eden takes time off from her job as an editor at a publishing house in New York City and goes to Cleveland for the funeral. What she finds there is anything but a clear case of murder/suicide.
This book kept me guessing the whole time. Was it the father/husband or even Eden's father? Was it a jealous lover? While the plot did some stretching of what I would think was entirely possible, if you're willing to go along with that, it was very intriguing. Lots of suspects in a story about a girl who wants to find the truth and also come to terms with her sad relationship with her mother. Finding out what happened becomes a way for Eden to make up for her coldness towards Tara and the brother she refused to acknowledge while he was alive.
Desperate Measures, by Jo Bannister
Characters	Gabriel Ash, the father, intelligence officer
Cathy Ash, his wife, who's been kidnapped and held captive with their two sons, Guy and Gilbert for four years in Somalia
Hazel Best, the constable on leave who befriends Gabriel after his wife and children's abduction
At the beginning of this tale, Gabriel Ash is meeting with his psychiatrist, Laura Fry in the presence of Hazel Best, a friend and police officer, after just discovering that his wife, whom he believed to have been kidnapped and murdered by Somali pirates, is alive. He has just talked to her via computer and is convinced that she is alive and well. It turns out that his two sons are also alive, but what he has to do to get them back safely to England is ghastly. He has been instructed by the pirates that he must kill himself live on the internet before they can be sent home. The two women advise him to call the police but he refuses to do so, saying that leaving the police out of it is part of the deal. However, Hazel is still a member of the police force, although persona-non-grata at the moment, so some collaboration is done. There is another female present at the meeting in the form of Gabriel's dog, a lurcher named Patience. Lurchers are apparently a cross-breed dog found in Britain between a sight hound, usually a greyhound, and some type of terrier or collie. Patience is taken in by Hazel after Gabriel carries out the demands of the kidnappers but she isn't your average dog. As Hazel puts it, Patience can say more with the angle of her nose than can be expressed in an essay. But the plot in this story has lots of twists and turns as Hazel is determined to find the pirates responsible for her friend's death even after his wife and boys are safely home in Norbold. Gabriel's wife won't have a dog in her house so Hazel keeps her even though it means she will have to move out of her rented flat and into a small house. Now that she has the extra room, Hazel also takes in a young homeless man called Saturday, a nickname given to him while in care by the other kids, because being Jewish, he was 'excused on Saturdays'. As Saturday tries to clean up his act Hazel keeps puzzling out the threads of what actually happened to Cathy Ash and the two boys and why her story doesn't quite add up.
An interesting and readable book and even thought the plot takes some fairly wild turns I found it completely believable due to the skill of the writer's story telling.