Book Review: The Woman in Blue by Elly Griffiths

The Woman in Blue (Ruth Galloway #8)

By Elly Griffiths

Published and Sold by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, May 6, 2016

Purchased and read on Amazon Kindle

Links: Amazon, B&N, Powell's

Rating: Two and a Half Stars (out of five)

Note: This is the eighth book in a series.  I suppose some of what’s contained in this post could be construed as spoiler-ish if you haven’t read the first seven, though I do not discuss the actual mystery plots of any book besides The Woman in Blue (and do not spoil the resolution).

Hmmm.   So, I usually really like the Ruth Galloway mysteries.  Ruth is an archaeologist whose skills the police put to use on occasion, and since part of me is still a twelve-year-old girl who wants to be an archaeologist when she grows up, they’re right up my ally.  I do not and have never loved the primary “romance” (if that’s what it is) in these books, though I do like that Ruth is a single mother.  Maybe that’s why this book ultimately just didn’t work for me; there’s really no archaeology at all and the personal relationships have a central role to play—and a strange one at that.

The plot centers around two murders and one assault in the town of Walsingham, where there are Anglican and Catholic shrines.  Ruth gets a call from a grad school friend who’s now an Anglican priest right around the same time a young woman receiving treatment at a nearby hospital is murdered.  It turns out that Ruth’s friend, Hilary, has been receiving threatening letters from someone who doesn’t like women priests.  She’s in Walsingham on a conference for women who might want to become bishops, so she and Ruth meet up.  The second murder victim is another priest, a friend of Hilary’s who was also attending the conference.  DCI Nelson has to figure out what, if anything, a cult of the Virgin Mary has to do with the murders and/or the letters.  Also complicating the situation is that Nelson’s wife, Michelle, is assaulted by the murderer—leading to the revelation that she’s been having an affair with Tim, one of Nelson’s assistants.

Clearly, there’s a lot going on here.  Sadly, none of it has anything to do with archaeology, though Griffiths does gesture toward Ruth’s skills by having her dig around in a basement for some old artifacts.  While Ruth finds a clue that ends up being important to the case, she really doesn’t have much to do besides listen to Hilary’s worries and pass the information she learns along to Nelson.  Because of Michelle’s affair, Ruth and Nelson’s always awkward relationship gets even more awkward, and there’s some stuff here that I felt embarrassed to read.  It’s probably realistic, given that Nelson is married to Michelle and he and Ruth have a child together, but yikes!  The longer Griffiths drags that relationship on without some definite “we parent a shared child and nothing else” resolution, the less interested I get in reading these books.

The whole point of this series is supposed to be (I thought) that Ruth helps the police solve crimes by using her archaeology skills, and that didn’t happen here.  For me, this is the weakest entry in the series so far.  If there’s another new entry next year I’m sure I’ll read it, but if it’s not a stronger novel, I’ll no longer rush to read these right after they’re released.

Book Review: Journey to Munich by Jacqueline Winspear

Journey to Munich (Maisie Dobbs #12)

By Jacqueline Winspear

Published by Harper and Sold by HarperCollins, March 29, 2016

Purchased and read on Amazon Kindle

Links: Amazon, B&N, Powell's

Rating: Four Stars (out of five)

So, there I was, back to blogging at a faster pace… for awhile.  Then, well, things got busy.  First of all, we had event after event at The New Job.  Then, as I think I’ve mentioned, I’m a pretty active adult recreational musician.  I both sing and play an instrument, and there was a week in there when I had a rehearsal or a performance every night.  Then I got a sinus infection.  So, as you can see, blogging fell by the wayside.  The good news, though, is that I haven’t stopped reading.

One of the books I read in the midst of all the busyness was Jacqueline Winspear’s latest entry in the Maisie Dobbs series.  I really, really like this series.  It’s quite sophisticated and well-written and, on the whole, the characters are much more psychologically complex than those in your average historical mystery series (that’s not a ding at other writers—just a compliment to Winspear).  The early Maisie Dobbs books are set in the 1930s and they explore the ongoing effects of World War I on the British public.  In the first 10 books, Maisie is a private detective whose business takes her all over England and occasionally across the channel.  Book 11, A Dangerous Place is a reboot of sorts; after losing a husband and a pregnancy, Maisie finds herself on Gibralter, where she functions, essentially, as a British spy (as well as having a mission of her own).

Journey to Munich continues the espionage plotline, as Maisie is sent to Munich to recover a British inventor who has been imprisoned by the Nazis for distributing anti-Hitler propaganda.  While there, Maisie also looks for the daughter of her nemesis, John Otterburn.  She runs into trouble with Nazi high command, of course, but she does not give up on either of her missions.

I really enjoyed this book.  A Dangerous Place felt sort of gloomy and weird to me, and I was glad to see Maisie back in action here.  I’m still not sure how I feel about Maisie as a spy, and I miss her interactions with her assistant Billy and receptionist Sandra.  I think there’s potential for Maisie to return to more mundane detecting, though, and this book sets the stage for that to happen while also allowing for the possibility that she’ll still work for the Secret Service from time to time. 

I do think the series has changed fundamentally, and that given its historical setting it almost had to.  World War II was devastating in very different ways from World War I, and Maisie’s social conscience won’t allow her not to be involved in some way.  I hope that as the war progresses, Maisie will use her skills to benefit both her country writ large and individual clients, paying or not, to whom she always been so personally and professionally committed.

Book Review: Gone West by Carola Dunn

Gone West (Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher #20)

By Carola Dunn

Published by Minotaur and Sold by Macmillan, 2012

Purchased and read on Amazon Kindle

Links: Amazon, B&N, Powell's

Rating: Three Stars (out of five)

This is one of my favorite series, and I’m glad there are so many of them.  I found them about a year ago and plowed through (I think) the first 17 in less than three months.  Then I realized that there were only a few more, so I’ve been reading one every few months or so since, to prolong the pleasure.  In other words, I learned my lesson from reading all 20 Phryne Fisher books in less than three months in 2014 (Dear Kerry Greenwood: When will Phryne be gracing the page again?  I miss her.  Sincerely, Lauren).

Like most long-running series, this one is a little uneven.  Some of the mysteries are convincingly high-stakes, with lots of tension.  Others are slower and even a little dull.  Most of them are fairly quiet country house murder mysteries, and Daisy finds herself involved in the murders because of her friendliness and compassion.  Gone West definitely falls into the country house category, and I suspect some readers will find it slow; the murder doesn’t happen until around halfway through.  I don’t think Gone West will ever be one of my favorites in the series, but I enjoyed it and was ultimately quite invested in learning who the murderer was. 

In this book, Daisy visits her friend Sybil, who is a secretary turned ghostwriter for an author of Westerns, at her employer’s remote home in Derbyshire.  Because the author, Humphrey Birtwhistle, can’t seem to recover from a bout of pneumonia, Sybil is afraid someone is slowly poisoning him and asks Daisy to investigate.  When Humphrey dies suddenly, the eccentric relatives and friends who make up his household are all suspects in his murder.  Of course, Daisy’s husband Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher is called in to investigate, and he brings along his trusty subordinates DS Tring and DC Piper.

Overall, the mystery was enjoyable.  I did care who killed Humphrey, and I particularly wanted Sybil and her paramour, a local doctor, to be innocent.  I had my suspicions about the murderer, but it wasn’t obvious, so Dunn gets points from me for a logical but suspenseful progression of events.  The book is a bit slow—it takes an awfully long time for the murder to happen—and a few of the obstacles to solving the crime are rather artificial (a suspect can’t be located, papers take a long time to go through, etc.).  These are not fatal flaws, though.

If this series has a problem, it’s that it’s getting harder and harder to explain why Daisy is always at crime scenes.  I think Dunn is aware of this, as Alec’s superiors have noticed her frequent involvement and complain about it, but metafictional self-awareness only goes so far (not an English major, you say?  Look it up, say I).  In isolation, Gone West does a good job of this—Sybil is an old friend of Daisy’s who has heard about her sleuthing ways—but how many friends of murder victims can one person know?  However, given how much pleasure I get out of these books I’m willing to continue suspending disbelief if it means I get more books. 

Book Review: Princess Elizabeth's Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal

Princess Elizabeth’s Spy (Maggie Hope Mysteries #2)

By Susan Elia MacNeal

Published by Bantam and Sold by Random House, 2012

Purchased and read on Amazon Kindle

Links: Amazon, B&N, Powell's

Rating: Two Stars (out of five)

So, it’s been over two months since I last posted.  They’ve been busy months, dear readers (if I have any).  For in these two months I have started a new job (yay!) and moved into a new house (yay!).  Now that things have settled down a little bit, I’m back to reading quite a bit and hopefully back to blogging regularly.  I won’t preface this with any more personal details and will instead jump right in to the book review.

Princess Elizabeth’s Spy is the second in MacNeal’s Maggie Hope series.  I read the first one a little over a year ago, and at the time I didn’t think I’d read any more of them (more on why below).  But when the second book was marked down a few months ago, I thought “why not?  Maybe it’s better than the first.”  You see, I really wanted to like these books.  They have a spunky heroine who was raised in the US but lives in England, are set during World War Two, and are mysteries.  From the jacket copy, I should like them.  But I have to say, I have found both books unconvincing and, to top it off, the prose ranges between flat and stilted.  This time, I probably won’t read any more in the series, Kindle sale or not.

In Princess Elizabeth’s Spy, Maggie, after failing the physical portions of MI-5 (or possibly SOE) training is sent to Windsor Castle to keep an eye on Princess Elizabeth (yes, the present Queen).  Her cover is that she’s the Princess’s math tutor.  The reason the princess needs a protector is that there are rumors of a plot to kidnap her and therefore to destabilize the English succession, making the German path to Occupation easier.

There are a number of problems with this plot, as you can probably tell even from my brief description.  The biggest one is, of course, the Princess Margaret, who would have been the rightful heir to the throne had anything happened to Elizabeth.  To really destabilize the succession, you’d have to do away with both Princesses, something the book never addresses.  For me, there was also a major verisimilitude issue.  I just didn’t believe that this was something that could have happened without it having out some time in the past seventy years.  I realize that fiction is, well, fiction, but good writing convinces readers that events in the story could have happened.  This is very difficult with fiction that involves major historical figures from the twentieth century or later—it’s hard to find and fictionally plug a hole in the historical record without readers going “huh?”.

My other problem has to do with Maggie herself.  In both the this book and the first one, Mr. Churchill’s Secretary, she turns out to be very wrong in her conclusions about who the culprit is in the murders and/or government plots she’s investigating.  Her wrongness leads to dramatic climaxes, but ultimately she solves the mysteries largely by chance (or someone else solves it and she goes along for the ride).  She’s supposed to be brilliant, but it’s hard to buy that she has extraordinary reasoning skills when her reasoning so often leads her astray.  She can also be really annoying, and readers are just supposed to buy that, for example, a low-level operative can successfully dictate to the head of MI-5 who her handler will be.  I didn’t, and at times I found her “spunk” to be, well, kind of silly, immature, and possibly dangerous.

I’ll leave it there.  I already mentioned the lack of panache in the prose, and I don’t feel a need to hammer the point home.  I’ll just say that a good mystery makes the reader believe that something real is at stake and that it’s the sleuth’s job to find it out and make things right, and this book did not do that for me, hence the two star rating.

Special Feature: Inspector Lewis: The Academic Body Count, Season 3 Part 2

The Oxford University of ITV/PBS's Inspector Lewis is a dangerous world for academics, and in this series I bring you the lowdown on who in the academic community is most likely to kill be or be killed.  This post gives the details for episodes 4-5 of US Season Three.  Here’s a link to all previous posts in the series (in reverse order).

Ah, Season 3, we hardly knew you!  It’s only two episodes shorter than Season 2, but the difference feels much greater for some reason.  These two episodes bring us five murders.  One victim is an undergrad, one is a faculty member (of sorts), and three are unaffiliated with the university.  There are no university-affiliated murderers here, but the events of both episodes have everything to do with the victims and/or murderer’s college days.  This theme of the past coming back to haunt you is very prevalent here and episode 3.5, in particular, is very creepy in that regard.

Season 3 brings us a total of thirteen victims (two episodes have three victims instead of the usual two).  Of those, one is an undergrad, three are faculty, one is an administrator, and one is staff.  The remaining seven (just over 50%) are unaffiliated with the university.  Of the six murders (episode 3.5 has two), only one, a staff member, is university-affiliated.  I have to say, season three suggests that the university is a pretty dangerous place, but not because of those who work and go to school there!  You’re much more likely to be killed by someone outside the university than someone within it, and employees are in a lot more danger than students this season.  Also, I’m curious to rewatch seasons 5-7, because I remember thinking that there were quite a few grad students murdered on this show, and to this point not a single one has met his or her end at the hands of one of Oxford’s many deranged killers.  Maybe it’s just that grad school feels so deadly that one assumes that on a show like this, it must be.  Hmmm…  Anyway, Season Three suggests that while it’s probably safe to go to school at Oxford, you might want to think twice about working there, and watch out for your old college friends.

If you haven’t seen the season, here’s the Amazon link.  It’s included with Prime if you have it.

Details for Episodes 3.4-3.5 below the cut.  Contains spoilers.

Special Feature: Inspector Lewis: The Academic Body Count, Season 3 Part 1

Special Series: Inspector Lewis: The Academic Body Count, Season 3 Part 1

The Oxford University of ITV/PBS's Inspector Lewis is a dangerous world for academics, and in this series I bring you the lowdown on who in the academic community is most likely to kill be or be killed.  This post gives the details for episodes 1-3 of US Season Two.  All previous posts in the series (in reverse order).

I’m back, after an unanticipated hiatus induced by a combination of novel-writing, family insanity, and other things, and I have for you another Lewis post.  Season 3 is shorter than Season 2—five episodes—so I’ll break it down into two posts.  This post covers episodes 1-3, and I’ll cover episodes 4-5 in the next installment.

Having gotten the formalities out of the way, let’s move on to the season!  We have a total of eight victims in these episodes, of whom four are in some way directly affiliated with the university.  None are students, but two are faculty, one is an administrator, and the fourth is, nominally at least, staff.  Of a total of three murderers, one is staff and two are unaffiliated.  So, once again, Oxford is more dangerous to academics than in danger from them.

I’d forgotten until this rewatch how many of my favorite episodes are in Season 3.  We have rockstars, war reenactors, and a community orchestra, and we learn about both Hathaway and the M.E., Dr. Laura Hobson.  Also, I’ve learned since my last Lewis post that there are new episodes airing in Britain, as we speak.  We should have them here at some point (I’m looking at you, PBS), so there’s even more deadly fun ahead.  But, without further ado, onward to the Season 3 details!

If you haven’t seen the season, here’s the Amazon link.  It’s included with Prime if you have it.

Details for Episodes 3.1-3.3 below the cut.  Contains spoilers.

Book Review: The Lake House by Kate Morton

The Lake House

By Kate Morton

Published by Atria Books and distributed by Simon and Schuster, October 20, 2015

Purchased and read on Amazon Kindle

Links: Amazon, B&N, Powell's

Rating: Four Stars (out of five)

So I love Kate Morton’s work.  Every time I hear she’s going to release a new book, I get excited.  I’m always torn over whether to get the book as soon as it comes out and read it in bits and pieces as I have time or to wait until I have a free weekend and can seclude myself with the book and some snacks.  This time, I chose option A, not having a free weekend in the immediate future.  I think I’m glad I did.

Like all Morton books, The Lake House has two intertwined narratives, one from the present and one from the past.  In this book, the present-day (well, 2003) story concerns Sadie Sparrow, a London police detective who, after a case goes badly wrong, goes to Cornwall to stay with her grandfather.  While there, she stumbles across an old, abandoned estate and discovers that the family who lived there left the property after their baby son was kidnapped and never found.  As you can probably guess, the past (1933) story concerns what really happened the night Theo Edevane was kidnapped.  Theo’s older sister, Alice, who is a successful detective novelist, also plays a significant role in both stories.

I think I’ve mentioned that books like this, which move back and forth between the present and the past, are some of my favorites to read.  Usually in books like this I prefer one story or the other, and with Morton, that’s usually the past story.  This time, I found both narratives equally convincing and enjoyable, and I particularly liked seeing how Alice developed from the young girl in 1933 to the acerbic novelist in 2003.  As I progressed from the beginning to the middle of this book, past red herrings and false leads and alongside likable, human characters, I thought, “This is great!  I’ll finally be able to give a book five stars on the blog!”

Alas, it was not to be, and the ending is the reason why.  I had it figured out long before I finished the book, and when I first thought of it I dismissed it:  “No, she wouldn’t be that obvious, or that trite.”  Well, she was, and I was quite disappointed.  So disappointed, in fact, that I almost knocked the book down to three stars, or maybe three and a half (now that Miss Fisher has induced the half star ratings).  Then I remembered how much I enjoyed reading most of the book, and decided four was the way to go.  And now that I think about it, I was disappointed with the end of The Secret Keeper, too, after staying up way too late to finish it one night several years ago.  The Forgotten Garden thus remains, for now, my favorite Morton.

As you can see from the sidebar, I’m doing NaNoWriMo this year, and since I’m writing historical fiction I’m doing quite a bit of research reading, so this may be the last book review I post for a bit.  We shall see.

TV Review: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries Episode 3.6

“Death at the Grand”

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries Episode 3.6

Available on: Netflix or DVD (Amazon link)

Rating: Two and a Half Stars (out of five)

Why must you do this to me, show?  After a really good 3.4 and a fantastic 3.5, you give me… this.  Phryne’s father is back in this one, and neither she nor I is pleased to see him.  For the Baron of Richland is not a good father or a pleasant chap in general.  I have a feeling we’re supposed to see him as an endearing rogue, but as you can probably tell, he is not dear to me.  There are a few fun moments in the episode, and the main mystery I guess works okay, but the Baron grates, and that undermines my overall enjoyment of the episode to the extent that I had to introduce a half star for the first time ever.

The episode opens with one of the aforementioned fun moments, as Phryne quizzes Dot on different types of handguns, which are spread on the table in front of them.  Dot is an apt student, so look out, world!  Then Aunt Prudence arrives with the news that her sister, Phryne’s mother, is out of money and looking for a loan.  This means trouble, because Phryne’s father was supposed to have wired her a large sum, courtesy of Phryne, before departing Australia at the close of episode 3.1.

Then the phone rings, and it’s Jack, of course.  He needs Phryne at a crime scene; a concierge has been stabbed on the roof of Melbourne’s Grand Hotel, and a bag bearing Phryne’s name was found at the scene.  Why?  Well, instead of going back to England, the Baron of Richland has been living it up in the Grand Hotel.  And now we know why Phryne’s mother doesn’t have any money.

In their quest to figure out who killed the concierge, Phryne and Jack uncover a robbery, illicit gambling, and old feud between the Baron and one his associates.  There’s also a second murder and a possibility that the Baron might be a murderer, either in the present or the past.  Could we be so lucky?  Would this show go that dark?  That you might discover the answers to these questions is the main reason to watch this episode.  The solution to this mystery is plausible, but it’s also clearly more about setting up the last two episodes than it is about telling a story on its own.  Logically, the last episodes will involve the Baron, and I don’t like it one bit.

We also have a weird side plot involving Dot and Constable Martin, who spent the previous episode irritating us all with his sexism.  That’s improved… but will he be romantic competition for Hugh?  You can probably guess the answer to that, but just in case, I’m not telling.  This plotline does one thing: it makes me want Hugh back.  If that was the point, writers, you’ve succeeded.  Finally, there’s a bit of romantic banter between Jack and Phryne, but it felt forced to me, like it was put there just to have it there.  This is an excellent example of an episode where the mystery-solving and the romantic comedy just don’t mix very well.

As you can probably tell, I’m not fond of the episode, and I hope the writers manage to rescue the Baron’s storyline to give us something decent for the last two episodes.  I’m not terribly optimistic, but we’ll find out soon.

The next post should be a book post, and I promise I’ll have nicer things to say!

Special Feature: Inspector Lewis: The Academic Body Count, Season 2 Part 3

The Oxford University of ITV/PBS's Inspector Lewis is a dangerous world for academics, and in this series I bring you the lowdown on who in the academic community is most likely to kill be or be killed.  This post gives the details for episodes 6-7 of US Season Two.  Previous posts in the series: Intro, Season One, Season 2 Part 1, Season 2 Part 2.

 The final two episodes of Season 2 give us one undergraduate victim, three community victims (one an Oxford alum, though), and two—yes, two—faculty murderers (one for each episode).  So we’re back to the Season One problem, it would seem, insofar as Oxford is in more danger from academics than it is a danger to academics.  If it’s any comfort (and I’m not sure it is!), only in “The Quality of Mercy” do the murders directly relate to university life; in “The Point of Vanishing,” the murderer is just a murderer who happens to have “professor” as his job title.

As this is the last season 2 post, it’s time for some overall season totals.  Over seven episodes, we have fifteen victims (only episode 2.3 breaks the “two victims per episode” norm).  Three of those victims are undergrads, two are faculty, three are administrators, one is staff, and six are unaffiliated with the university.  Of eight murderers, four are faculty members (two in episode 2.1, remember) and four are unaffiliated with the university.  A variety of faculty, staff, and students assist Lewis and Hathaway in their investigations, so the university isn’t all bad for the community, but I have to admit that these episodes make faculty look pretty scary.  It’s even more worrying to this humanist that three quarters of the faculty murderers are in the humanities.  And we like to think our fields of study improve our behavior toward our fellow humans!  The good news, I guess, is that while grad school often feels like a kill-or-be-killed kind of world, not one grad student has done either—yet (though to be fair it’s kind of a grad student’s fault that everything goes so badly wrong in “The Quality of Mercy”).

If you haven't seen the season, here's the Amazon link.  It's included with Prime, if you have it.

Details for Episodes 2.6 and 2.7 below the cut.  Contains spoilers.

Book Review: The Adventuress by Tasha Alexander

The Adventuress (Lady Emily Mysteries #10)

By Tasha Alexander

Published by Minotaur Books and distributed by Macmillan, October 13, 2015

Purchased and read on Amazon Kindle

Links: Amazon, B&N, Powell's

Rating: Four Stars (out of five)

Lest you think this blog has over the course of its brief life morphed into an all-Lewis-and-Phryne TV-fest, let me disabuse you of that notion by posting a review of the most recent Lady Emily mystery by Tasha Alexander.  This series, which focuses on the crime-solving adventures of an English noblewoman at the end of the nineteenth century, is one of my favorites, and for at least the last several years Alexander has released a new volume every October.  I hope she keeps it up for a while at least.

The Adventuress marks a return to form after what were, for me, a couple of less worthy entries in the series.  Both Behind the Shattered Glass (2013) and The Counterfeit Heiress (2014) had resolutions that were either unsatisfying or so obvious as to be irritating.  In The Adventuress, Emily’s lifelong friend and one-time suitor Jeremy Sheffield is finally engaged—to an American heiress named Amity Wells.  Amity’s family arranges a two-week engagement celebration in Cannes, to which Emily and her husband Colin, along with some other friends and family, are invited.  Soon after their arrival, Jeremy’s friend Chauncey Neville dies by drinking poisoned whiskey.  Everyone but Emily believes it’s a suicide, but when a young French dancer who had met the English party on the night of Chauncey’s death is found murdered, Emily’s instincts are proven right.

Amity of course knows about Emily and Jeremy’s longstanding friendship and one-time romance, and she sets out to befriend Emily.  However, someone wants her to think that Emily has no interest in her friendship and is out to sabotage her engagement.  Who?  Why?  The solution to this mystery is integral to the resolution of the murder plot. Like all of the Lady Emily books, The Adventuress uses alternating narrative perspectives.  This time, we get third-person narration from Amity’s point of view as well as Emily's first-person perspective. This has caused Alexander problems in the past, most notably in The Counterfeit Heiress where the second narrative voice made the mystery's solution fairly obvious, but in The Adventuress, it works pretty well by developing the "who wants to sabotage Emily and Amity's friendship" plot alongside the murder plot.

The Lady Emily books overall are fun, quick reads.  If you’re a fan of the Late Victorian era or of historical mysteries in general, they’re reliably enjoyable in spite of the occasional dud.  One thing I really appreciate about this series is that once Emily and Colin are married (at the end of book 3), their relationship is mostly a background to the mysteries.  It’s nice to read about a partnership between a married couple who love and can count on each other without a lot of relationship-based drama.  I particularly like how, in The Adventuress, jealousy never enters the picture on Colin’s part, even though there’s some suggestion that Jeremy and Emily might have lingering feelings for each other.

On a final note, for fans of other historical mysteries there’s a lovely shoutout to Elizabeth Peters’s Amelia Peabody books.  I like thinking of the characters as all inhabiting the same fictional world at the end of the nineteenth century.  Overall, I enjoyed this book a lot and will continue to look forward to new entries in the series.

TV Review: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries Episode 3.5

“Death and Hysteria”

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries Episode 3.5

Available on: Netflix (DVDs will be released on October 27, 2015)

Rating: Five Stars (out of five)

Okay, so this episode isn’t perfect, but it’s the best episode of the season so far.  It has everything you’d expect from a Miss Fisher mystery: a twisty turny plot, lots of witty banter, beautiful clothes, and Phryne insisting on helping those cast aside by mainstream society—in this case, “hysterical” women.

The episode opens with a group of women dancing the lawn at Aunt Prudence’s estate.  We then see Aunt Prudence conversing with the head psychiatrist, Dr. Samuels, and learn that she is letting the doctor use her house as a sanatorium because he has helped her cope with her son Arthur’s death.  When one of the patients dies by electrocution, aunt Prudence summons both her niece and the police, so Phryne and Jack are soon on the scene.  We soon learn that all is not as it seems with Dr. Samuels and his partner Dr. Perkins, and Phryne wonders if her aunt might have been taken in by an unscrupulous practitioner intent on taking Prudence’s money.  The case takes numerous twists and turns as we discover that Dr. Samuels is in disgrace with his medical colleagues, in no small part because he tries to save women from unnecessary hysterectomies.  Dr. Perkins, too, is up to something as is his sister Harriet, who serves as the doctors’ secretary and assistant.  The solution is moderately shocking and the episode is well-plotted so that the reveal makes sense.

I won’t reveal the murder weapon; let it suffice to say that it leads to much witty banter and some understated hilarity when our heroes discover it, and it allows for lots of innuendo between Phryne and Jack.  Their relationship is at its finest; we see the attraction but we’re not hit over the head with it and both characters behave like the ones we’ve come to know and love.  Hugh is completely absent, as he’s still on the sulky fishing trip he embarked on after being refused a promotion in Episode 3.4, causing this viewer to wonder whether the actor had another break, or the show had a budget issue, or what, because pouty Hugh is a weird story choice.  His replacement is an extremely sexist and irritating constable; as Mac remarks, “It’s men like that, that make the rest of them look reasonable.”  Fortunately he’s not around enough to spoil the episode.

Overall, this was a fun, well-plotted episode, and I hope the rest of the season continues in this vein.

Special Feature: Inspector Lewis: The Academic Body Count, Season 2 Part 2

The Oxford University of ITV/PBS's Inspector Lewis is a dangerous world for academics, and in this series I bring you the lowdown on who in the academic community is most likely to kill be or be killed.  This post gives the details for episodes 4-5 of US Season Two.  Here's the Intro post; here's the Season One breakdown; and here’s the first three episodes of Season 2.

In the first three episodes of season 2, things look pretty grim for Oxford faculty, staff, students and administrators.  We have victims in all four categories, and two faculty murderers.  Thus far in Season 2, undergrads aren’t as dangerous as they are in Season 1, but the community of Oxford is still pretty dangerous, what with all the murderous ex-Communists and, in these episodes, vengeful parents running around.

Episodes 4 and 5 contain a total of four victims (two in each episode).  Only one—a faculty member—is a member of the university community at the time of his death, but most of the murders connect to Oxford U in some way.  Neither of two murderers is directly affiliated with the University.  These episodes suggest that you can’t escape your past (even by becoming an English professor).  Your high school and college days may or may not be the best of your life, in other words, but they will haunt you forever whether you like it or not.

If you haven’t seen the season, here’s Amazon link.  It’s included with Prime, if you have it.

Episode-by-episode details below the cut.  Contains Spoilers.

TV Review: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries Episode 3.4

“Blood and Money”

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, Episode 3.4

Available on: Netflix (DVDs will be released on October 27, 2015)

Rating: Four Stars (out of five)

For me, this is the best episode of the season so far.  The mystery has a lot of twists, but it isn’t hard to follow and the solution makes sense.  Also, while Phryne and Jack have some nice personal moments, those moments are driven by the story rather than the other way around.  Things between Dot and Hugh aren’t so good, though, and the manufactured drama between them keeps this from being a five-star episode.

The plot concerns the murders of two boys from Melbourne’s impoverished Collingwood district, where Phryne spent much of her childhood.  Phryne is drawn into the case when Paddy, a young homeless boy, asks her to find his missing brother.  The boys are part of a gang called the Bottle Top Boys, and the case concerns medical research and a drug-and-jewelry-theft scheme as well as the murders.  Paddy approaches Phryne because she’s legendary in Collingwood, and she takes the case because she wants to help people from her old neighborhood.  I like it when the show references Phryne’s origins, and they used those origins particularly well here.

The subplot involves Hugh’s mother’s opposition to his conversion.  There were always religious tensions between Dot and Hugh, but we haven’t heard a lot about this until now, and we certainly haven’t met his mother.  That Hugh’s mother opposes the marriage isn’t all that surprising, but it’s really irritating that he chooses not to tell Dot.  He tells her nothing—and does not adequately explain why.  Clearly, the writers wanted a reason to delay Dot and Hugh’s marriage without breaking them up.  It feels manufactured and can you tell I find it irritating?  Frankly, Hugh is a jerk in this episode, and he’s been a jerk all season.  I hope they redeem him in the remaining four episodes.

Mac is great in this episode.  We see her in her non-ME professional capacity, and she also assists in the investigation.  I love her and Phryne’s friendship, and I’m glad we get to see more of her this season.  Jane, on the other hand, is still totally MIA.  Everyone seems to have forgotten that Phryne had an adopted daughter, and I can’t help but find this odd.

Overall, I really enjoyed this episode and hope the show continues on the trajectory established here in the second half of Season Three.