Review: A Sociopath's Guide to a Successful Marriage by MK Oliver

Synopsis: A whip-smart and darkly funny crime novel—perfect for fans of My Sister, the Serial Killer and The Maid—that follows a wife and mother with a deadly secret that she must suppress if she wants to maintain her picture-perfect façade.

Meet Lalla Rook. Lalla has a lot on her plate: She needs to guarantee her husband makes partner, secure her dream house in Hampstead, and get her daughter into a prestigious prep school. And on the afternoon she stabs a stranger seven times after he breaks into her living room, she has a four-year-old’s birthday party to host.

With an unambitious partner, two demanding children, and a barely adequate large house in a nice (if not quite fashionable) part of town, Lalla’s life isn’t quite perfect yet. And she can’t pretend she hasn’t missed the adrenaline rush that comes with transgressing. Besides, as a wife and mother, she’s already an expert multi-tasker. So, disposing of a body, framing a friend, and being the world’s best mother can easily be managed alongside the usual domestic minutiae.

It’s just that her husband Stephen seems distracted, her daughter’s drowning of the class hamster is affecting her academic future, and then there is the unexpected intruder. Who is this man and what does he want from her? Because Lalla has a past she’d rather keep hidden—and the sudden appearance of the police means that avoiding them will be yet another task to cross off her to-do list.

Funny, calculating, hyper-competent, and ambitious, Lalla is your next favorite anti-heroine. Just don’t mention it to her mother-in-law.

~ ~ ~

This is a great fun read with a protagonist who will stop at nothing to maintain the perfect facade of her life and the ensure the pathway to her future life poses no obstacles.

You cannot but help like Lalla - afterall, if we are honest, we all have a little of the sociopath in us. Author Oliver provides the reader with a quirky and irreverant look at life in suburbia - at bit like "Desperate Housewives" meets "Housewives Of ...." meets "Stepford Wives". The short snappy chapters keep the narrative flowing like a well-oiled machine. And love the "to do" lists at the end of each chapter. 

This tome does not take itself too seriously - and neither should the reader. Lalla aspires to what we all want in life - happy family, comfortable lifestyle, good friends, good job with promotion, good schools for the kids - she just has a slightly different way of achieving it - and being the sociopath that she is, will let nothing get in her way and stop her from getting it - not family, not friends, and certainly not a little murder or two or three!.

As Lalla muses ... "... the past will come back to haunt you if you don't smother it with a pillow ..." - and her most assuredly does! Will she let that get in the way of her ambitions - certainly not! Though at times we do worry that she may not have the full control over events that she thinks she has ..... but this is Lalla, our narrator, our BFF, our anti-heroine. Of course she will triumph!

Oh, and to those "reviewers" who didn't like the book because it "... was down to a male author putting on a female narrative voice... " - get over yourselves you nufties!  Are you implying men are not ever permitted to write female characters - and vice versa. If so, where would we be without some of the great literary pieces we have today. I would take their reviews with a pinch of salt or better yet, ignore completely.

Review: Five Found Dead by Sulari Gentill

Synopsis: Crime fiction author Joe Penvale has won the most brutal battle of his life. Now that he has finished his intense medical treatment, he and his twin sister, Meredith, are boarding the glorious Orient Express in Paris, hoping for some much-needed rest and rejuvenation. Meredith also hopes that the literary ghosts on the train will nudge Joe's muse awake, and he'll be inspired to write again. And he is; after their first evening spent getting to know some of their fellow travelers, Joe pulls out his laptop and opens a new document. Seems like this trip is just what the doctor ordered…

And then some. The next morning, Joe and Meredith are shocked to witness that the cabin next door has become a crime scene, bathed in blood but with no body in sight. The pair soon find themselves caught up in an Agatha Christie-esque murder investigation. Without any help from the authorities, and with the victim still not found, Joe and Meredith are asked to join a group of fellow passengers with law enforcement backgrounds to look into the mysterious disappearance of the man in Cabin16G. But when the steward guarding the crime scene is murdered, it marks the beginning of a killing spree which leaves five found dead—and one still missing. Now Joe and Meredith must fight once again to preserve their newfound future and to catch a cunning killer before they reach the end of the line.

~ ~ ~

The author provides the reader with a puzzle and mystery that is centered around how Christie's story amplifies the travelers' own experience on the actual Orient Express and of their perceptions of the fellow passengers.

This theme is referred to quite often by the fictional character of crime fiction author Joe Penvale and his sister, lawyer Meredith, who embark on a journey on this famous train only to find themselves caught up in their own version of "Murder on the Orient Express".

Like the Christie novel, the reader meets Joe's fellow passengers on the train - in fact it is a train full of detectives of one sort or another. There is the locked room murder, all passengers are suspects as Joe put himself in the position of Poirot and investigates. Clues and red herrings abound, as the body count rises (a la Death on the Nile), and the author reveals that not all is what or who they seem.

An entertaining homage to the Queen of Crime.

Review: Arden by GD Harper

Synopsis: Alice Arden, idealistic and wealthy beauty, burnt at the stake for killing her husband, the former mayor of Faversham in Kent. But was she really the one responsible for the most scandalous murder of the sixteenth century?

William Shakespeare, England’s greatest playwright, born thirteen years after Alice’s execution. Why does his first-ever play, written about this murder, not bear his name?

This is a story of two people – one reviled, one revered – whose fates become linked in a tale of corruption, collusion and conspiracy. Based on historical documents and recently published academic research, Arden unveils shocking new evidence about the murder of Thomas Arden and reveals, for the first time, a remarkable new theory about Shakespeare’s early years.

~ ~ ~

The premise of this historical fiction tome was the lure for me - the delivery left me a little undecided with regards as to how I felt about the narrative as a whole - but persevere I did.

This tale of murder is told in the first person by both of our primary characters - William Shakespeare and Alice Arden - their stories separated in time by some fifty years with Alice's story taking place from the early 1530s and Shakespeare's from the 1580s.

We already know (or should do if we have picked up this tome) that Alice's rise and falls end with her being burnt at the stake for her involvement in her husband's murder.  This was the fate for wives at the time as it was considered treason for a wife to kill her husband.  Wifely insubordination must be neutralised and contained; scrutiny and proper regulation of the household was vital to the preservation of domestic order. Tudor society too was dominated by what Alice herself refer's to as "narrow-prying neighbours" where the public and private activities of individuals was open to observation and interference by the greater community.

We also know that this crime is the focal point for exploring the possibility the Shakespeare himself wrote as his first-ever play, based on the fate of Alice, with whom he may have been related to through his own mother. The play existed - it was written and presented and the reader can find a copy for themselves online (see links below).  Harper posits that quite possibly this theme such that the Bard was unable to ascribe his name to it - it was that much of a career-ending political hot-potato.

For me, the journey from beginning to end was itself a little arduous and didn't really pick up until Alice's lover re-appears in her life. Harper does a decent job of exploring through the Shakespeare narrative, of whether Alice was a naive tool of her lover Mosby or a willing participant, who used her husband's own greed to get what she wanted.

I found the author's note at the end the most informative, and if crimes set in Tudor England are of interest, then definitely pick up this historical fiction tome.

Further reading:

The English Broadside Ballad Archive - the Complaint & Lamentation of Mistress Arden

The Newgate Calendar - Alice Arden of Feversham

Chambers' Book of Days - Entry for November 23rd

Project Gutenberg - Arden of Feversham

Review: The Mysterious Romance of Murder by David Lehman

Synopsis: From Sherlock Holmes to Sam Spade; Nick and Nora Charles to Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin; Harry Lime to Gilda, Madeleine Elster, and other femmes fatales—crime and crime solving in fiction and film captivate us. Why do we keep returning to Agatha Christie's ingenious puzzles and Raymond Chandler's hard-boiled murder mysteries? What do spy thrillers teach us, and what accounts for the renewed popularity of morally ambiguous noirs? 

In The Mysterious Romance of Murder, the poet and critic David Lehman explores a wide variety of outstanding books and movies—some famous (The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity), some known mainly to aficionados—with style, wit, and passion.Lehman revisits the smoke-filled jazz clubs from the classic noir films of the 1940s, the iconic set pieces that defined Hitchcock's America, the interwar intrigue of Eric Ambler's best fictions, and the intensity of attraction between Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer, Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. He also considers the evocative elements of noir—cigarettes, cocktails, wisecracks, and jazz standards—and offers five original noir poems (including a pantoum inspired by the 1944 film Laura) and ironic astrological profiles of Barbara Stanwyck, Marlene Dietrich, and Graham Greene. 

Written by a connoisseur with an uncanny feel for the language and mood of mystery, espionage, and noir, The Mysterious Romance of Murder will delight fans of the genre and newcomers alike.

This was possibly written as a follow up to the author's previous book, The Perfect Murder: A Study in Detection.

The book is divided into five parts (the romance, the props, the authors & directors, the films, and some profiles). The author's key areas of interest - poetry, speech, writing - form the basis for this narrative.

Part One specifically deals with the language and dialogue of the genre. Part Two the props used (clothing, cigarettes, etc). Part Three looks at authors and directors such as Fleming, Hitchcock, Chandler, Greene, Wilder, McBain, et al. Part Four is a series of essays on films and actors (eg: Double Indemnity, Cape Fear, The Asphalt Jungle, Odd Man Out, etc) whilst also exploring the villains and locations (San Francisco, Chicago, London). Part Five consists of profiles of Stanwyk, Greene and Dietrich.

Despite being a huge fan of noir, espionage and crime, I was not a fan of this. The 40 plus page introduction was overly long and nearly finished it for me then and there.  I found my attention wavering and I was wishing the author would hurry up and get to the crux of it all.  Even when he did, I was not sufficiently engaged to absorb anything that was written down in front of me - the writing style and overall presentation did not inspire me.

Image by Wonman Kim

What I also found lacking was an exploration of international noir - both authors and film - which is something I would definitely have been interested in, especially as I have been reading a lot of Frederic Dard (the classic French noir author) and his contemporaries.

Definitely one for the dedicated movie fan of the genre as this book explores specialty subject matter that only those seriously immersed in the genre will appreciate.

Who Killed Jane Stanford? by Richard White

A premier historian penetrates the fog of corruption and cover-up still surrounding the murder of a Stanford University founder to establish who did it, how, and why.

In 1885 Jane and Leland Stanford cofounded a university to honor their recently deceased young son. After her husband’s death in 1893, Jane Stanford, a devoted spiritualist who expected the university to inculcate her values, steered Stanford into eccentricity and public controversy for more than a decade. In 1905 she was murdered in Hawaii, a victim, according to the Honolulu coroner’s jury, of strychnine poisoning. With her vast fortune the university’s lifeline, the Stanford president and his allies quickly sought to foreclose challenges to her bequests by constructing a story of death by natural causes. The cover-up gained traction in the murky labyrinths of power, wealth, and corruption of Gilded Age San Francisco. The murderer walked.

Deftly sifting the scattered evidence and conflicting stories of suspects and witnesses, Richard White gives us the first full account of Jane Stanford’s murder and its cover-up. Against a backdrop of the city’s machine politics, rogue policing, tong wars, and heated newspaper rivalries, White’s search for the murderer draws us into Jane Stanford’s imperious household and the academic enmities of the university. Although Stanford officials claimed that no one could have wanted to murder Jane, we meet several people who had the motives and the opportunity to do so. One of these, we discover, also had the means.

Review: Murder During The Hundred Years War by Melissa Julian-Jones

Synopsis: In 1375, Sir William Cantilupe was found murdered in a field outside of a village in Lincolnshire. As the case progressed, fifteen members of his household were indicted for murder, and his armor-bearer and butler were convicted. Through the lens of this murder and its context, this book will explore violence, social norms and deviance, and crime and punishment 'at home' during the Hundred Years War.

The case of William Cantilupe has been of interest to historians for many years, ever since Rosamund Sillem brought it to light in her work on the Lincolnshire Peace Rolls in the 1930s, but this is the first time it has received a book-length treatment, taking relationships between the lords and their servants into account. The verdict - guilty of petty treason - makes this one of the first cases where such a verdict was given, and this reveals the deep insecurities of England at this time, where the violent rebellion of servants against their masters (and wives against their husbands) was a serious concern, enough to warrant death by hanging (for men) and death by burning (for women). The reader is invited to consider the historical interpretations of the evidence, as the motives for the murder were never recorded. The relationships between Sir William and his householders, and indeed with his own wife and, and whether the jury were right to convict him and his alleged accomplice in the first place.

This is a fascinating look at a controversial murder that took place in the period known as The Hundred Years War.

Sir William de Cantilupe, a nobleman with a lineage dating back to the Conquest, was murdered, his body left in a ditch. His entire household, including his wife, was suspect; however, both at the time and today, there are difficulties in piecing together events and provide a suitable outcome.

The investigation of crime in the 14th century was much different that today. Finding a body, Julian-Jones says, was a series matter for the village, who were considered to be collectively responsible for it and could be fined if it was found that they had concealed this fact from the authorities, who in essence were the local Sheriff and the Coroner. The role of Sheriff and Coroner were separate; the coroner represented the Crown's financial interests in court cases, and neither role technically sat in judgement - for "holding the pleas" was the jurisdiction of judges. However, the coroner - with or without a jury - could hold an inquest - an investigation to hear evidence from live witnesses who attend at court and also may be read witness statements from witnesses who are not present. Records of the crime, the victim and accused, and the verdict were documented - witness testimony was not.

In this instance, there were no surviving records of the trials of the various suspects and it is here that Julian-Jones brings to light similar criminal cases to illustrate each point she raises, whilst giving the reader a sense of proceedings. 

Medieval justice and criminal investigations is nothing like what we are used to today - social connections, social and financial position, and a person or family's good name counted for much. It is likely that juries were pulled firstly from the local gentry and then those on the next social rung under them. Thus, many of those being accused would be known - and human nature being what it is, it is hardly surprising that a person's social standing or reputation put them in a better light than some unknown person or itinerant traveller. It could also work in the reverse where one of suspect character would automatically be cast as the villain. Julian-Jones talks about "social cohesion and closing ranks" with the greater community lending its support to those within their own community.

But the question still remains - "cui bono" - who benefits? And that is possibly something that we will never really know for sure.

Using contemporary documents and accounts and past scholarship, Melissa Julian-Jones presents the reader with various hypotheses, whilst examining in detail both the members of the household (including the wife) and the extended family connections "... to consider likely scenarios ..". As such, it is necessary to gather as much background information as possible to contextualise possible narratives. In this day and age, family and familial connections were very important and it is necessary to delve into the background of all associated with this case in order to eliminate possible suspects and motives.

This is an excellent and well researched investigation of a cold case. Those with an interest in the medieval period and obscure criminal cases will enjoy this very much. 

read more here: 

The Murder of William de Cantilupe

Going Medieval with Melissa Julian-Jones

Review: The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

Synopsis: In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved killings.

But when a local property developer shows up dead, 'The Thursday Murder Club' find themselves in the middle of their first live case.

The four friends, Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron, might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves. Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer, before it's too late?

Not having any idea who Richard Osman is and what he had previously written, I came into this with no preconceptions. I loved the premise of the story when I requested a review copy.

No surprises - I loved it! The story follows the first person narrative of newly arrived Joyce (as diary entries) and the standard third person narrative for the rest of the book. The setting is an up-market retirement village - Coopers Chase - populated by a vast range of retired (or semi-retired) professionals, four of who make up the Thursday Murder Club. This group meet together to look over cold cases from the files of one of the groups' former members - however, when real life steps in and the property developer Ian Ventham is murders, the group decide to get in on the sleuthing themselves. 

" ... if today was anything to go by, this whole murder investigation is going to be the most enormous fun ..."

This reminded me slightly of Charlaine Harris' "Aurora Teagarden" series - so if you love that, then you will also love this one.

The story builds up slowly and has a great twist at the end. It is witty, suspenseful, serious, fun; the characters are endearing, slightly questionable in their ethics, and nowhere close to retiring!. I do hope there is more.

Royal Murder by Marc Alexander

‘And tell sad stories of the death of Kings: How some have deposed, some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed, all murdered . . .’

So wrote Shakespeare in Richard II, and in his new book Royal Murder Marc Alexander investigates the sad stories of the victims of royal murders.

Ignoring violent death by battle or political execution, this book is devoted to personal acts of jealousy and revenge which has stained the Crown with blue blood down the ages. The subjects range from those murders one may vaguely remember from schooldays without being aware of their backgrounds of intrigue and mystery, to lesser known scandals such as the secret murder of Count von Konigsmarck, the lover of Princess Sophia of Zell, wife of George the First.

Killers of the Flower Moon: Oil, Money, Murder and Birth of the FBI

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David McGrann investigates a series of murders of wealthy Osage people that took place in Osage County, Oklahoma in the early 1920s—after big oil deposits were discovered beneath their land. Officially, the count of the murdered full-blood wealthy Osage native Americans reaches at least 20, but Grann suspects that hundreds more may have been killed because of their ties to oil. The book reports cattleman William Hale as the mastermind standing behind the murders and presents detailed evidence.

From The Australian:

In the 1890s, the Osage had been decanted from homelands in Kansas into seemingly barren wastes in Oklahoma. The discovery of ­hydrocarbons beneath, however, shortly made them the richest people per capita in the world, occupying, as Grann puts it, America’s first ‘‘underground reservation’’.

After the oil-drilling came the gold-digging: soon enough, everyone wanted a piece of the Osage action. Conmen moved in to rip them off; lawmakers set to screwing them down; marrying an Osage provided access to an enviable lifestyle. A 30-year-old woman from Oregon wrote the tribe offering her hand: ‘‘Will you please tell the richest Indian you know of, and he will find me as good and true as any human being can be.’’

Not everyone was so ingenuous. If misfortune should befall an Osage partner, potential rewards multiplied. The official death toll of the ‘‘Reign of Terror’’ is something in the order of 60. Unofficially, Grann suggests, it is incalculable. A staff writer for The New Yorker, he concentrates on only one of a host of conspiracies, an investigation of the vendetta against the family of one Mollie Burkhart, engineered by cowboy turned ‘‘high-class gentleman’’ Bill Hale, who was at first, ironically, perceived as a sympathiser with the Osage.

read more here 

@ Independent (Ireland)

@ Sydney Morning Herald

@ The Guardian

@ Rolling Stone

@ The Star

@ Atlas Obscura

@ The New Yorker

@ Wikipedia

Welcome return for author’s medieval investigator Foxley

From the Gravesend Reporter:

A Gravesend author, lecturer and scientist has just launched her latest book dealing with medieval murders.  It is the fifth in a series that is making Toni Mount a household name in the area.

She told us: “It is called The Colour of Murder and deals with even more medieval murders, including the mysterious death of The Duke of Clarence, one of the future Richard III’s brothers, who, tradition tells us was drowned in a wine barrel.”

“Some 540 years ago, on 18th February 1478 the Duke of Clarence was, famously, drowned in a butt of malmsey wine. Did he jump or was he pushed? The question has never been answered, so this was an opportunity for my intrepid investigator Seb Foxley – to finally solve the mystery.”

'Flowering of the Bamboo': Revisiting the mass poisoning of 1948

From The Japan Times:

The acronym GUBU (grotesque, unusual, bizarre and unprecedented) fits the mass murder at the Teihoku Bank in Tokyo on Jan. 26, 1948. Sixteen people were deliberately poisoned, including an 8-year-old boy. More money was left behind than stolen.

While the incident has long been pored over in Japan, Triplett’s book was one of the first to explore the explosive case in English when it was published in 1985. Triplett, a journalist and playwright, stumbled on the case upon hearing about Sadamichi Hirasawa, a painter who was convicted of the murders and sentenced, but never executed. He lived out his life on death row. Hirasawa’s conviction was widely disputed.

Triplett examines the case from two perspectives: Hirasawa’s and that of Unit 731, the Imperial Army’s secretive Biological Warfare outfit, which had been operational during World War II and had ties to the case.

Besides the forensics of the crime Triplett’s book portrays just how much Japan was in flux in the immediate aftermath of the war: The Americans were trying to pull Japan’s institutions out of a deeply ingrained feudalistic culture, the police wanted to get someone on the hook quickly, and the press didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory while trying to convict Hirasawa in the court of public opinion. A compelling read, even if it unearths more questions than it answers.

read more here 

@ The Japan Times

@ Huffington Post

@ wikipedia - Sadamichi Hirasawa

See also:

• Unit 731: Testimony by Hal Gold
• Occupied City by David Peace
• Justice in Japan: The Notorious Teijin Scandal by Richard H Mitchell
• The Super Sleuths by Bruce Henderson & Sam Summerlin

Killing Kings: Patterns of Regicide in Europe, AD 600–1800

“Killing Kings: Patterns of Regicide in Europe, AD 600–1800” by Manuel Eisner, is a statistical study of the demise of 1,513 monarchs in 45 European monarchies over the period 600 to 1800. It reveals that almost a quarter (22 per cent) of all royal deaths were bloody – accidents, battle deaths and killings – and that 15 per cent of all deaths were outright murder.

As a criminologist, Eisner divides his gruesome statistics for kingly killings into four broad scenarios. Top of the list is murder as a means of succession; next up is murder by a neighbouring ruler and competitor, attempting to gain territory or seal a military victory; personal grievance and revenge, fueled by rape, murder or insult committed by the ruler, rank third as scenarios; and finally, the outsider killing.

Read full article here at Medievalist and an abstract of the published paper at British Journal of Criminology. 

Review: Blood Royal

Blood Royal: A True Tale of Crime and Detection in Medieval Paris by Eric Jager 

Love it!

Once again Jager takes us back into French history with the murder of Louis Duke of Orleans in 1407.

We follow the investigation of Guillaume de Tigonville, as Jager uses witness depositions to the set the scene preceeding the murder. We then follow the murder investigation itself which takes de Tigonville down a dangerous political path, the results of which affect the future of France.

With clever and concise storytelling and the use of medieval documents, Jager outlines the repercussions of the investigation on both the main characters and of France itself.

See Also:

Review in France Today: A Detective In Medieval Paris

Review in Dallas News: Blood Royal

Review in Seattle Times: A Mystifying Murder In Medieval Paris

Review in Washington Post: Blood Royal

Review in Washington Post: Blood Royal

Serialised Blog Post by Eric Jager in Washington Post:

• One of history's first detectives
• The Provost examines the victim
• An eye-witness is deposed
• A break in the case
• The Provost sets a trap