Books: Foxglove Summer By Ben Arronovitch (2014)

“Following the events Broken Homes, Peter Grant is left shaken by the new developments that revealed a betrayal of a long-time colleague. The defection by this valued partner -to whom Grant also had a strong emotional tie-, has made things difficult for him and Nightingale. But the sudden disappearance of two eleven-year old girls in rural Herefordshire has become a media sensation. Given the chance to escape bad memories of London, Grant travels west with Beverley Brook, and Peter soon finds himself caught up in a deep mystery and having to tackle local cops and things that small towns seem to thrive on; a tangle of neighborly gossip, local marital issues, and local gods. And everything, it appears, closes up at 4pm!”

With the fifth book in the series, Foxglove Summer puts most events of the last four books on the backburner, as we get your basic tale of a Big City cop out in the sticks of the deep, deep suburbs. As your fish out of water story goes, you could do worse. Aaronovitch understands what he’s doing here, and while the basic plot is nothing new, we get more dimensions from Peter when he spends the entire book outside the Folly and Nightingale -who spends the entire book just communicating with Peter via the phone. There is a logical reason for this, but I sort of missed him.

I noted the pacing issues with Broken Homes (all the books seem to have this problem, which was probably why I read the first book in 2016 and did not continue on until this past year), but Foxglove Summer seems to be a more cohesive story, if only because this book had one real storyline going for it instead of multiple ones the previous ones had. Yes, we get Lesley sending antagonizing texts (and a quick phone call) and there is no visit from the Faceless Man, but this episodic book actually worked better than the more serialized four books previous.

What was also striking –and probably why I end up reading more British mysteries than American- is how everything is dealt more matter-of-factly. The child-in-jeopardy trope never felt cheap, as the cops asked more straightforward questions and gave truthful answers that most American parents would be shocked at.

We get a bunch of new characters that I hope stick around. While Beverly Brooks appeared in the first book, here she is more three-dimensional and more interesting. But new ones include Hugh Oswald, a retired wizard, traumatized by the secret magical battles of World War II, and Mellissa, his granddaughter who has a very special affinity with bees. Oswald is a sad and distinctive character and the granddaughter a bit weird. Loved Dominic, the cop assigned to help Peter. He’s gay and has a farmer boyfriend and no one in this little hamlet seems to have an issue with him or Victor.   

Peter’s trademark wit remains place, which is a seemly interesting combination of cleverness and dashes of cluelessness. He’s still honorable, despite his cheek and snarky comments, but ultimately remains a good human who happens to be a wizard-in-training.

Books: Halloween Party By Agatha Christie (1969)

“At a Hallowe’en party, Joyce – a hostile thirteen-year-old – boasts that she once witnessed a murder. When no-one believes her, she storms off home. But within hours her body is found, still in the house, drowned in an apple-bobbing tub. That night, Hercule Poirot is called in to find the ‘evil presence’. But first he must establish whether he is looking for a murderer or a double-murderer. Unmasking a murderer isn't going to be easy for Poirot. But with his friend, crime novelist Ariadne Oliver,  they investigate reckless teenagers and take on occult themes. Again, the sharp wits of Poirot and the enthusiastic deduction of Mrs Oliver join forces.”

Not a particularly exciting whodunit, but it does have the usual Christie flair of sometimes witty, sometimes mean characters. And it’s her only book where a child is murdered. The novel, though, is seemly concerned with how times have changed since Ms. Christie’s first book was released in 1920. Published 1969, near the end of her life, Halloween Party has many characters commenting on the how society has really changed in those last fifty years. There are a lot of discussions about how the criminal justice system has changed, which was probably a not so veiled reference to abolition of capital punishment in 1965 in the UK. But all the older characters seem a bit bitter that youths are taking over and disrespecting their elders and getting away with major crimes because they come from broken homes. Also, it seems, in her old age, Christie appears somewhat taken aback about how the world changed in the 1960s –the more permissiveness of any era she lived in.

The book lags and comes off more simple and less complex than her previous works –almost (maybe) like she needed a book to fulfill a contract. Still, she would publish three more novels, 1971s Nemesis, her last written featuring Miss Marple, 1972s Elephants Can Remember, the last novel she wrote featuring Hercule Poirot, and 1973s Postern of Fate, the last featuring her other recurring detectives, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. However, there were two more books featuring Poirot and Miss Marple to come. Christie, fearing she be killed during WWII, decide to write two novels that would be published after her death. So during the height of this terrible period in the 1940s, she wrote Curtain (1975), the “official” last Hercule Poirot mystery and Sleeping Murder (1976), the “official” last Miss Marple mystery. They would sit in a vault for the next three decades. But in the span of those thirty-odd years, she never went back and revised them, so they’re somewhat set outside of her established continuity of both those characters.

Indecently, actor/director Kenneth Branagh will helm and star in an adaptation of this book set for the fall of 2023. What changes will be made to the story should be interesting. The two remakes Branagh did, Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile were both set in 1934 and 1937, respectively. A Haunting in Venice, the title of this new film, will probably have to be set in the same time period. So I’m guessing all the “social commentary” of the late 1960s will be excised.

Books: The Season of Passage By Christopher Pike (1992)

 

"The year is 2004 and, detente in place, the U.S. has sent a manned mission to Mars to find out what happened to and perhaps rescue the Russian cosmonauts who landed there two years earlier and have not been heard from since. Lauren Wagner, chief medical officer on the U.S. unit Nova, suspects alien infection killed the crew of the Lenin and worries that the same may happen to those on her ship. Little does she know that they face a fate far worse: there are vampires on Mars!"

Veteran YA horror author Pike released this more science fiction than horror tale in 1992 (though set in 2004). As a long time book seller for various retail outlets, I was more than aware of his prolific output. Much like R.L. Stine and his spooky books for kids, Pike seemed to be the next step for those kids who outgrew the Goosebump stories. The Season of Passage is defiantly bent towards adult, though, and it starts out as fairly compelling. But eventually, at well over 400 pages in paperback, it becomes bogged down in campiness and bad 50’s B-movies cliches Joel and the ‘bots would make fun of on MST3K.

I can now see why I never read his books, even though this one came highly recommended. He’s like the James Patterson of young adult books, with a cringe-like prose and with a grasp of science that is laughable a best. Any reader of The Expanse series who loved the more realistic science presented in that series will really have to suspend their beliefs here, as Pike throws what knowledge of space he knew back in the early 1990s right out the window.

To justify the pages, I guess, there is subplot concerning Lauren's earthbound sister and a story she is writing -which appears to be a telepathically received fable about how Mars became a wasteland of ghouls (the book goes out its way to give some credence to why Mars lost its atmosphere). But even that part, more interesting than the rest, cannot save this very silly book

Books: The House Next Door By Anne Rivers Siddons (1978)

“Thirty-something Colquitt and Walter Kennedy live in a charming, peaceful suburb of the newly bustling Atlanta. Life is made up of enjoyable work, long, lazy weekends, and the company of good neighbors. Then, to their shock, construction starts on the vacant lot next door, a wooded hillside they'd believed would always remain undeveloped. Soon, though, they come to realize that more is wrong than their diminished privacy. Surely the house can't be "haunted," yet something about it seems to destroy the goodness of every person who comes to live in it, until the entire heart of this friendly neighborhood threatens to be torn apart.”

Author Anne River Siddons was mostly known for her novels set in the South, being closer to Pat Conroy in tone, than what she was really remembered for, the sometimes complicated world of Chick Books. The House Next Door was her second book and an hundred and eighty degree from her debut (and despite the success of this book, never tried her hand a Gothic horror again). But the book, despite the fact that Stephen King once called it the “Finest horror novels of the 20th Century", and provides a lengthy review of the novel his non-fiction Danse Macabre book, can go either way when it comes to what is exactly happening here. In other words, it’s left up to reader to guess if all the things that occur in the book, in that house, are supernatural or just a case study on our flawed lives.

Yes, the improbably named Colquitt and her husband Walter begin to believe otherwise, but by then I was rushing through the book to get it done. It’s atmospheric in the beginning and the prose is well written, and those who were born and bred in the upper echelon of Southern life, will appreciate it never making fun of the ridiculousness of it all. And since it was published in 1978, the book contains bits of casual racism, homophobia, and deaths of a few pets.

It’s certainly a different kind of haunted house story, but it won’t be for everyone.