The Jury Box
by Steve Steinbock
The cozy subgenre owes its popularity to the books’ memorable settings, their ensemble casts of characters, clever writing with a hint of romance, and very often, their humor. In this installment of The Jury Box we’ll look at several books that fit loosely in the cozy category. But first we’ll look at two historical mysteries, both set in the early 1920s. Sujata Massey, The Star from Calcutta, Soho Crime, $29.95. Perveen Mistry is Bombay’s first, and in 1922 its only, female lawyer. In The Star from Calcutta, the fifth book in the series, she’s been assigned her biggest and most famous clients, Champar Films and its lead actress Rochana, wife of the studio’s director. Rochana is in the midst of a contract dispute with her previous studio. Perveen and her best friend, film-buff Alice Hobson-Jones, are invited to a gala screening of Rochana’s upcoming film, Queen of Hearts. The evening turns into a long, riotous affair. The next morning, a British government appointed film censor is dead and Perveen’s friend Alice is missing along with the actress Rochana. Massey’s writing is smart, historically detailed, and emotionally rich. Today the Indian film industry is well known. While the term “Bollywood” wasn’t coined until the 1970s, film production in Bombay goes back to 1913, and Massey’s book provides fascinating background to the industry in Bombay during a politically charged and ethnically diverse time.
Charles Todd, A Day of Judgment, Mysterious Press, $28.99. Lindisfarne, an island on the English coast near to Scotland, is known as “Holy Island” due to its connection to early Celtic Christianity and several sixth-century saints. When a body is washed ashore across the causeway in Northumbria, Scotland Yard is eager to have the case resolved quickly and without controversy. Ian Rutledge, recently promoted to chief inspector, is a fish out of water in the Northumbrian villages. On top of that, the judgmental voice of Rutledge’s late corporal Hamish McLeod was bound to be chatty this close to Scotland. It’s July 1921 and the First World War is still fresh in everyone’s memory, and attitudes in the fishing community are still bitter toward the Germans. Readers who have followed the Ian Rutledge series know that all the books in the series had been co-written by the mother-son team until Caroline Todd’s passing in 2021. Carolyn is missed, but it’s good to know that the series is still strong.
Karsten Dusse, My Inner Child Wants to Kill (translated by Florian Duijsens), Soho Crime, $29.95 HC, $19.95 TPB. German writer and attorney Karsten Dusse introduced readers to Björn Diemel, a frustrated criminal attorney who finds justice and personal empowerment by killing his mob-boss client and taking over his criminal empire (see Murder Mindfully, now also a Netflix TV series). In the second book of the series, Diemel still runs his late client’s business, as well as his own law practice and preschool, which he bought in order to guarantee a place for his three-year-old daughter. What I found remarkable about My Inner Child was how well it works as a dark comedy and a caper novel, and how the author approaches the subject of mindfulness and mental health in a sincere and sympathetic way while at the same time spoofing it.
Donna Andrews, Probable Caws, Minotaur, $28.00. Aside from the pun in the title, crows play a small but important role in Donna Andrews’s latest mystery, serving as watchdogs to Ragnar Ragnarsen’s seven coal-black Friesian horses. Ragnar, a friend to blacksmith Meg Langslow, is a successful heavy metal drummer and owner of an estate on which he is transforming his mansion into a Gothic-inspired castle. Meg is contemplating her metalwork when she gets a call for assistance transferring forty-seven horses to Ragnar’s estate. Ragnar has offered to host the large herd of rescue horses that were evicted. The owner of the land where they had previously been pasturing recently died, and his two sons disagree about the future use of the land. One of the sons, Abel Abernathy, suspects that his brother may have hired thugs to pester and abuse the horses. Donna Andrews, who was named a Grandmaster by the Mystery Writers of America earlier this year, is among the stalwarts of the cozy world.
Leonie Swann, Agnes Sharp and the Wedding to Die For, (translated by Amy Bojang), Soho Crime, $29.95. Leonie Swann’s delightful trilogy about the eccentric octogenarians of Sunset Hall comes to an explosive conclusion when two within their group decide to marry. A half-dozen retirees of various backgrounds, including former spies, soldiers, criminals, and a few unusual pets, have been living out their lives in a domestic co-op founded by retired policewoman Agnes Sharp. Agnes rarely cracks a smile, but she’s particularly concerned that her best friend Bernadette (blind and in witness protection) is getting married to Jack, a former hitman. But along with the RSVPs, a note arrives promising death. As Agnes and friends try to identify which of their guests might bear a grudge, first one, then another of the guests suffer violent deaths. As The Wedding to Die For was my introduction to the Agnes Sharp series, I had a difficult time following the plot at first. But the book’s entertaining characters, Swann’s witty writing, and Amy Bojang’s graceful translation kept me entertained until the plot kicked into gear. Fully satisfying and highly recommended.
Hal Glatzer, Two Birds, Words and Pictures, $15.99. A pair of late-in-life sexually active sexagenarians are two birds of a feather in this modern-day Nick and Nora style whodunit. Herman Korn and Teddie Woodley are a loving couple, happily married—but not to each other. Herman, a retired magazine editor, is looking into an urban legend about a dozen vintage Indian motorcycles that were stolen in 1948, then briefly offered for sale in 1986, only to disappear again along with investors’ money. Meanwhile, Herman’s wife, an environmental scientist, is anxious to stop the sale of a large plot of land adjacent to her research site. Herman’s lover, Teddie, has been cast as Lady Macbeth in a local production. These scattered plotlines converge when bodies start piling up in this third book in Glatzer’s Friends with Benefits series.
Elaine Viets, Beach Blonde Betrayal, Severn House, $29.99. Norah McCarthy runs a small apartment building populated by a carefully curated band of misfits in a mythical town halfway between Miami and Fort Lauderdale. As the book opens, Norah and her lover Dean (a former cop currently in witness protection) are strolling along the canal discussing the nature of Florida weirdness when they witness a park employee rescuing an old lady and her cat from a gator attack. The hero makes the news and soon opens a sandwich shop specializing in gator meat, but Dean is sceptical about the entrepreneur’s authenticity. Norah is more concerned about her friend and tenant Mickey, an artist specializing in beach refuse, whose fiancé may be a conman. Most concerning is the spate of murders of young blonde women, all victims of strangulation on the beach. When the police arrest one of Norah’s tenants, a socially awkward author of film retrospectives, Norah must find the real killer. Filled with deadpan humor, as dry as it is sweet, Beach Blonde Betrayal is the second in Viets’s Florida Beach series.
Amnon Kabatchnik, Bloody Broadway: Plays of Menace, Murder, and Mystery Volume II: 1930-1960, BearManor Media, HC, $50.00; TPB $39.00. Retired theater professor Kabatchnik presents eighty-eight plays, the majority of which debuted in New York’s Broadway theater district, in this second encyclopedic volume. Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra (1931) is an adaptation of Aeschylus’s Oresteia set in New England during the Civil War. Kabatchnik’s analysis of the play gives him an opportunity for an extended discussion of O’Neill and his work. Similarly, Valentine Davies’ Keeper of the Keys (1933) featuring Hawaiian police detective Charlie Chan allowed Kabatchnik a chance to discuss Earl Derr Biggers’s work and the many adaptations of the Charlie Chan series on stage, screen, and spoof. Other plays discussed in Bloody Broadway include James M. Cain’s adaptation of his work for the 1936 production of The Postman Always Rings Twice. John Steinbeck’s 1937 play Of Mice and Men, based on his novel of the same name, debuted at New York’s Music Box Theater and was directed by George S. Kaufman. Other plays of note include the wonderful comedy Arsenic and Old Lace (1941), Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (1953), and the musicals Guys and Dolls (1950) based on Damon Runyon’s stories and West Side Story (1957) based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. In addition to detailing the history of each play’s development, its cast, its playwright, and its subsequent performances and adaptations, Kabatchnik provides an array of review summaries and snippets, including both pans and praises.