Review: Mistress of Bees

Mistress of Bees by Bernie Mojzes
My rating: 0 of 5 stars

DNF at 56%, when the darkness finally overcame me.

The Mistress of Bees of the title is a sorceress from a poor background. Seemingly abandoned or lost by her parents as a small child, she was helped by a street urchin a couple of years older. They became friends, companions, lovers, had a huge breakup in their mid-teens over some stupid things they both did (mostly her) that meant they had to leave the city, then she did various unsavoury things in order to survive. It was in the mid-book flashback to these years that I left her.

Sure, it's understandable, given her background, that she fell into prostitution, theft, drug use, and eventually murder. It doesn't make me like her, though I did like her somewhat at first; she's wryly funny, determined, has no respect for authority (again, understandable), and while she doesn't have much in the way of a moral sense, she does draw the line at standing by while innocents are killed if she can prevent it. Though in the very first of this linked series of stories, she herself kills innocents who were about to be killed by a monster, in order to destroy it and protect the rest of the world. She regrets it, but you know she'd do it again if she had the choice a second time.

The whole book is dark like that. She's not good at making friends, but the ones she does make all die, some of them horribly, at least one because she made a bad decision. In the end, it was too much for me. It isn't grimdark, quite, because she does at least have good intentions and is sometimes able to act on them and help people, at least for a while. But it's not truly noblebright either; at best, it's noblegrimy. It reminded me, especially early on, of Garth Nix's Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz: Stories of the Witch Knight and the Puppet Sorcerer : sword-and-sorcery setting, morally grey protagonist(s), dark deeds done for the protection of the world. But it's darker and more depressing than that.

It is well written for the most part, though I'll mention a couple of faults I saw in the pre-publication version I got via Netgalley; they may be fixed in the published book. Firstly, some vocabulary issues, most prominently the consistent use of "discrete" when the author means "discreet," an error even good writers make. But more importantly, and less likely to end up completely corrected, a lot of the apostrophes are either in the wrong place - particularly when plurals are involved - or missing entirely (including in an "its" that should be "it's").

Overall, this is a good book that isn't a good fit for this reader, unfortunately, though I did enjoy some aspects of it.

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Review: The Secret Adversary

The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm reasonably sure this was a re-read, but only because I remembered one plot point (the spelling of Tuppence's name in a note). If I had read it before, it was many years ago, probably in a copy belonging to my grandmother. It's the first in a series about a pair of adventurers/detectives who, in this book unemployed after WWI (they'd been a soldier and a nurse), decide to become more or less mercenaries taking on anything that comes along. What coincidentally comes along is a search for a missing young woman who may know the whereabouts of a secret document which could precipitate terrible political chaos if made public.

The plot, while doing the usual "red scare/conspiracy theory" thing of the time, is a complicated and exciting one, full of red herrings. There's sustained tension about which of two apparently helpful characters is leaking information to the antagonists. There are plenty of sinister opponents, though it remains cozy, and nobody we're meant to like is seriously harmed. The detective duo are likeable, and, as the spymaster comments, complement each other: Tuppence is the smart-but-headstrong one, Tommy the solidly reliable but not too clever one.

The thing is, though, for most of the book they are not working together, since first one and then the other goes off and gets captured by the adversaries. Absence works to make the heart grow fonder, and since they had known each other for years before the story starts I'm not going to call it a thin romance, even though they spend so little time together during the plot. I will ding the other romance as thin, though.

There's an American character who speaks, I suspect, stereotypically rather than typically for an actual American of the time (and refers to the second story of a building as "the first floor," which is what British but not American people call it). Still, his hustle and do-it-now approach moves the plot along and provides amusement. The various characters are all distinct, and there's plenty of courage involved in bringing the whole business to a conclusion.

Tommy and Tuppence are not rated as highly as Poirot and Miss Marple among Christie's detectives, but their adventures here are enjoyable. Unusually, Christie aged them in real time for their subsequent appearances, which makes me want to read the other books.

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Review: The Seven Dials Mystery

The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a delight, and honestly that was mostly because it's less like an Agatha Christie book and more like a P.G. Wodehouse book that's got entangled with an Edgar Wallace book, to the enhancement of both. In the end, I didn't feel like Christie quite brought off the secret society where everyone wears clock-face masks, because there wasn't any real reason for that other than creating an atmosphere. But it's genuinely funny (not as funny as Wodehouse, but funny in his manner), genuinely suspenseful (again, not as much so as Wallace, but in a similar way), has a great Christie twist that I didn't see coming whatsoever, and in general was fun enough and well-executed enough that I bumped it up to the Gold tier of my annual recommendation list.

The noble owner of Chimneys, the house that features so centrally in the first book in the series, has a strong Lord Emsworth vibe. His daughter Bundle is both a Wodehouse New Woman (irrepressible, headstrong, and capable) and a Wallace New Woman (capable, headstrong, and irrepressible), and acts as the main protagonist. The serious, bespectacled secretary is, of course, reminiscent of the Efficient Baxter, and is even frequently given the adjective "efficient," though he's not as much the butt of jokes as Baxter. The manservant Stevens is a less central, but still imperturbable and capable version of Jeeves. "Codders," the politician from the first book, whose besetting fault is that he speaks to one as if addressing a public meeting, is in fine form. There are multiple proposals, several murders, rapid travel in two-seater cars, brave deeds in the night, several pistols (automatics, incorrectly called revolvers at times, which was still a common mistake at this period), and the traditional settings of great country houses and London clubs.

Overall, a good ride, and I recommend it.

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Review: The Secret of Chimneys

The Secret of Chimneys by Agatha Christie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Unlike Poirot and Miss Marple, Superintendent Battle is one of those police detectives with minimal personality such as you'd find in a book by Freeman Wills Crofts, though despite his stolid manner and wooden, expressionless face, he does have a twinkle in his eye and an underlying intelligence which individualizes him.

This is a mystery based in international politics, and Battle is there to investigate the murder of an incognito prince who was about to become the restored monarch of "Herzoslovakia," a Balkan country, with the support of the British government and a consortium that wants to exploit its oil. Somewhere in the background is a notorious French/Irish criminal, a master of disguise, who's searching for a concealed jewel secreted in the house known as Chimneys some years earlier. The murder has occurred at Chimneys, and the place is crawling with VIPs, investigators, and their associates.

The cast includes a bombastic politician, known, because of his bulging eyes, as "Codders" to the disrespectful, which includes his rather dense and lazy secretary; the ineffectual nobleman who owns Chimneys and his bright and active daughter Bundle; the steel magnate who has rented Chimneys for a time, and his discontented wife; a beautiful young widow; and, centrally, a rough-and-tumble young man who has come over from South Africa to do a couple of Herzoslovakia-adjacent favours for a friend, taking that friend's name for the purpose, and becoming involved in the whole mess partly by coincidence. (view spoiler)[Of course he turns out to be the missing heir, which I saw coming a mile off. (hide spoiler)]

I didn't see the twist coming, and it's a good one. Battle is an effective investigator, and I enjoyed him, and the whole milieu, enough that I went almost straight on to the second in the series, which is even better.

I did give this one my "casual-racism" tag, partly because of the portrayal of the Jewish financier, and partly because of the free use of the word "Dago" early on and the reaction to the possibility, late in the book, that someone might have married an African woman. It very nearly got my "thin-romance" tag as well, since a big slice of the development of the main romance takes place offscreen, but it did at least have some development through the couple spending time together, so it dodges that tag in the end.

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Review: The Man Who Knew

The Man Who Knew by Edgar Wallace
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The title refers to a kind of savant character who researches and remembers facts about everyone and everything. It's somewhat misleading, though. (view spoiler)[The "Man who Knew" has completely the wrong end of the stick about what's going on, and even though the story follows his investigations, at the end another character gives the true account of events, which he's investigated offscreen. (hide spoiler)]

Even though the solution is something of a letdown, the journey to it is enjoyable, with lots of clues and red herrings and running hither and yon, ranging as far afield as Switzerland. The core plot involves the murder of a curmudgeonly old man who has made a lot of money by sometimes dubious methods, and an associated bank fraud. The old man's nephew is put on trial for the murder. Weaving in and out of the narrative is Mr. Mann, the Man who Knew.

It's a classic Wallace mystery, and even though the twist ending blindsided and disappointed me, I did enjoy it up to that point.

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Review: The Secret House

The Secret House by Edgar Wallace
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Classic Edgar Wallace: an intriguing title, a clever villain with (for the time) state-of-the-art technology, a calmly determined police detective who ends up in deadly danger, an appealing couple who have Troubles, a secondary villain who is up to no good but charming (in a foreign way; foreigners are, of course, automatically suspect and a bit strange), blackmail, murder, faked suicide, financial skullduggery, the mysterious house of the title with its secret panels and tunnels and lifts, the search for a missing heir under an unusual will, it's all here.

The ending is a bit abrupt and doesn't fully resolve everything, but I don't think it absolutely needs to. It's a strong point at which to end.

Wallace wasn't always that strong on continuity in his more quickly-written books, and the opening chapter of this one seems to be contradicted in minor ways in subsequent chapters, but if you don't think about it too hard and just imagine the well-described characters and their conflicts, it's fine.

Wallace's solidly written pulp novels consistently hit the Silver tier of my annual recommendation list. They don't have the depth of reflection or emotion to take them up to Gold, but they seldom have serious enough faults to drop them into Bronze. They're reliably good for the genre, and if you're in the mood for a pulp adventure, not written to a formula or leaning too hard into the silly tropes, but definitely right in the middle of what a pulp adventure is, picking up a Wallace is a sound move.

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Review: The Corbin Necklace

The Corbin Necklace by Henry Kitchell Webster
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A family of rich Midwesterners (their grandfather came in and, someone actually says aloud, chased the Indians off a bunch of land and took it) are preparing for a wedding. The grandmother, still alive at an advanced age, is rumoured to be planning to give an heirloom pearl necklace to the young bride as a wedding gift. The young woman doesn't particularly want it, and in fact doesn't particularly want the groom, either, as it turns out, but feels obligated to accept both, for reasons which unfold.

There's a big coincidence at the heart of the plot, but since it's more to set things up than to resolve them I don't mind as much as I otherwise would. The pearl necklace is a classic McGuffin, and both it and its less-valuable duplicate disappear, reappear, and are generally complication and suspicion generators throughout.

The bride's name is Judy, and her younger brother is consequently known to one and all as Punch, though he's officially John Corbin III. He's a clever, loyal and courageous 13-year-old, who takes his responsibilities seriously, and considers preventing the theft of the necklace to be one of them. He's effective, too.

The family's neighbour, never named, is the narrator, mostly an observer of the action because of a broken leg, though he does facilitate a few conversations. There's an older man who seems to have a past as some sort of law enforcement agent, who takes effective action as well, and is one of those characters that you'd like to hear more stories about. (As far as I know, though, there were not any.)

The groom is, without being malicious or villainous, still thoroughly despicable in his adherence to his background's assumptions about what he's owed and who it's right to inconvenience so that he gets it. It's a relief to everyone when he finally departs. Meanwhile, the tyrannical old lady is more flexible and fair-minded than you might expect.

It's a genial mystery in which there are no murders and no police, and all of the characters are distinct, believable, and the possessors of some depth. The author was a prolific producer of fiction, who said once that to make a living from fiction you had to churn out a lot of possibly inferior stuff, but this is decent, by the standards of the time and of today.

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