A Series of Impossible Events

Ape House by Sara Gruen

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


This book was so disturbing that I just skimmed it.  I have a problem with the innocent and helpless being put in jeopardy, even in fiction.  I know this is just my problem; I'm dealing with it, okay? 
The premises behind this book are so horrific to me as to be impossible to believe: firstly, that someone who wants to air a reality animal show would pretend to be an animal rights terrorist group, create a front page story of explosives and mayhem to effect the transfer of bonobos from a research facility to this ridiculously public display ... as if no one would notice?  Or that a man would conspire with this group, leading to the disfigurement of his fiancee, let her fish and plants die while she was in hospital, and still want to get back together with her although he's obviously a horndog who would screw anyone.  Why would that person care one whit for her? 
All my complaints aside and despite the speed read that glossed over quite a bit, it was an exciting read.  Somehow, however, I just knew Amanda would go through an apotheosis that turned her into a clean freak.  The mother's finding of the sex toys and zippy-bagging them was ... humorous.  I find it hard to believe that a writer in California would be subjected to the same pressures as an actor, but it is California after all.  If it was meant to be humorously satirical, it just wasn't funny enough.




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Plump and Juicy Mystery

Too Big to Miss by Sue Ann Jaffarian

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Disclaimer: I'm fat, middle-aged, and a former paralegal.
I devoured this in one day.  Most of the ickier bits (the death is a gritty one that's revisited through retrieved screen captures) I skimmed over.  Jaffarian has created some interesting characters, many of them plus-sized which is nice to see.  The mystery was a good one and there is a spot of romance, where Jaffarian falls into the fatal blunder of making the sex "the best [Odelia] ever had."  Writing like that makes me want to bang my head on the desk.  Every now and then I run into an author who has the ovaries to write that the sex was "pretty good ... and worth repeating to see if it got better."  If it's the best, chances are it will only go downhill, you know.  Real life says that sometimes it's really, really good and sometimes it's adequate and sometimes it knocks off socks you weren't even aware you had on. 
Odelia's cherished friend and mentor in the plus-sized world has committed suicide.  She did it on an internet camera, making it fairly obvious what happened ... or did it?  Odelia has her suspicions but the police have called it suicide.  Then Odelia discovers that her friend had many secrets in her life, each more shocking than the next! No! You don't say!  Ahem.  Was one of them the incredibly handsome but poisonous man who came to the funeral?  Or the little man who attacked him, blaming him for the death? 



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Hold the Mayo

A Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Audio-version.
Perhaps this was annoying because the child-like voice with the excruciatingly plummy accent of the reader grated on me.  It's a tone of voice very popular in theatre because the nasality is very penetrating and projects really well.  Nine cd's of it is very wearing.
On to the story - Why do I expect things in mysteries to make sense?  What sort of infant baptism holds a fragile child by the ankle and dunks them like Achilles?  Why would a murderer hang a body from a statue when leaving it where it was would hide it longer while hanging it would expose the murderer to a bigger chance of being discovered?  Kill, hang the body, leaving the weapon in place?  Oh yes, yes, people under stress do strange things.  Usually, they just run away though, or wipe their fingerprints.
And if Flavia only wears dresses, she must give the villagers a lovely view when she rides Gladys with her feet on the handlebars.
I was surprised by the amount of blood that came from a non-fatal head wound.  Not that I'm a forensics expert or anything, but ... who would have thought the old woman had so much blood in her?
The first book in this series annoyed me by having poison ivy in an English garden.  I keep asking Brits about that and get no clear answer.  I suppose it's far-fetched enough having an 11 year old genius-chemist.
The family conflict is getting old.  You know, I only had one older sister who did things like tie me to chairs so I wouldn't bug her when her friends came over, but even I think this family is out of control.  And the father needs a good smack up-side his head and a torch put to his stupid stamp collection.
What is my problem?
I really appreciated the addition of Porcelain (not sure of spelling because this was the audio) when she behaved with good sense, cutting off exploration of a dark place or fetching help when the plot called for it.  But how old is she?  She has no parents, so where does she live ... besides "London"?
Next time I will read the book (I will keep reading them) because the turn of phrase is good.


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Fully Rounded Pig

Death in the Truffle Wood by Pierre Magnan

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


First of all, I'm appalled by the cover.  How do I know this takes place in France?  Perhaps by the man in the horizontally striped boating shirt and the red beret?  Where's his baguette?
Alyre has a prized Trüffelschwein who indicates clues everywhere but is ignored.  Alyre is proud of his beautiful but unfaithful wife but, as he apparently loves the pig more, he doesn't let it bother him much.  He is more upset when someone throws a stone and injures the pig. 
Hippies who come to his town tend to disappear, so Laviolette is sent to look into the matter semi-unofficially.  He prefers to stay at small boarding houses and hang in the background observing.  The local police cooperate with him.  He investigates.  Magnan manages to make it all come off sort of quirky.  Maybe it's the pig.  Maybe it's the very nearly humorous grotesqueness.  It stoops to the "get everyone in the room and make calculated insinuations to see who blinks" wheeze then builds to a climactic if ridiculous chase scene.  And it has a nicely cynical coda.  All in all, it was worth reading.



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Maybe Wodehouse Ripped Off Lomax for Spode

The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I read this book many years ago as a teen when I was in my Christie phase.  I remember being annoyed with it because it appeared to be ripping off P.G. Wodehouse.  There were the typical Wodehousian characters in situations where people were actually being killed!  Re-reading it this month, I decided it was more an homage to Wodehouse.  And even though I'd read it before, I guessed wrong.  That's what's so wonderful about having a poor memory; a few months/years later, and it's almost a whole new book! 

If you read this, look for the characters comparable to Jeeves and Wooster and to Lord Emsworth.  If the subtleties don't pop out at you, Lord Coote's secretary, the Efficient Bateman is clearly the Efficient Baxter.  Of course, Baxter would never have the nickname "Pongo," but there is a Pongo Twistleton in Wodehouse.

Christie says she was intending something lighthearted (aside from murder, of course, which is not that frothy) and while she isn't Wodehouse, she does succeed.  There are several charming and humorous scenes, such as George's proposal to Bundle and Lady Coote's demeanor at the bridge table.  If you obsess too much with the Wodehouse connection, as I did in my early read of the book, you might find the murders and genuine danger incongruous.  Taken by itself, though, it's a cracking read.



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It's Just a Diamond

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


It's hard to believe that all of the mystery conventions in this book we might consider to be trite were innovations at that time.  It's also amazing that Collins was (apparently) dealing with an opium addiction while writing this.  [Well, that's what Wikipedia said Monday.  It may have changed since.]
I had read this before, many years ago, after reading The Woman In White which itself was in response to a book I read in the 1970s about how real life experiences informed the fiction of several mystery writers.  TWIW was terrific in the beginning, but my recollection was that I thought it went out of control toward the end and I lost interest in it.  This book was not like that.  I kept surging forward, although I had a memory in the back of my mind what the solution was.  I just had to see how we got there. 
What fun characters!  And in their own words.  There are many narrators, each giving their peculiar spin on events.  How can you not love that dear Miss Clack and her well-meaning but "sadly" unwelcome proselytizing!  And it's so much more fun to hear it from her side. 
The re-reading of this book was a result of having read of the influence of the Kent murder on it (the nightdress! the nightdress! the failed detective! the failed detective coming out of retirement!) in Kate Summerscale's book, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher. 
A book of its time (which is a coded way of expressing the possible political incorrectness), there is a lot of silly business about the superstitions of the "Hindoo" and yet there are characters that tread a bit far the other way to ennoble the Indians.  The most satisfying way in which Collins tips his hand in how he feels about them is by allowing them to rescue their Moon God's stolen diamond ... after 300 years of failing at it. 
Collins also shows his sympathies to the serving class by giving us well-rounded characterizations there ... yet making the steward/butler a figure of fun with his obsession with Robinson Crusoe and his way of soothing the distaff branch of the below stairs bunch by setting them in his lap.  Oh dear. 
As I said, great characters, interesting POVs, a jolly good mystery, and a trailblazer in the genre!



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Spoiling for Murder

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was soooo good!  I even read the footnotes!  Can you have spoilers in a non-fiction book?  If you think so, I recommend you stop reading right now!

I mean, it's not as if the alleged solution isn't telegraphed to you right on the cover, now that I look at it.  I'd sussed it by page 5 and a quick look through the photographs seemed to confirm it, so I guess it isn't meant to be that much of a secret.  It is still a mystery, and we'll Never Know the Truth, but we can get all gurgly while guessing (or maybe it's the high-test tea I've been drinking lately).


Summerscale certainly did her homework and shows the math.  She catalogs the influences of the murder on literature as well as the real life detecting, which became a passion for the population of England at that time, totally captivated as they were by the particulars.  Our Mr. Whicher walks into the investigation weeks late, but seems to pinpoint the most likely scenario immediately.  Unfortunately, he is unable to prove it or to pressure his suspect into breaking down and confessing.


There is no solution for five years, and then we have a bare-bones confession exculpating everyone else in a hundred mile radius.  The confessed killer is spared the death penalty by Queen Victoria and, despite continual applications for early parole, serves the entire life sentence and goes on to lead what appears to be a blameless life.  But, was there an accomplice?  Was the father infected early on with syphilis causing the madness in his first wife, the deaths of many of their children, and the blindness and early demise of his second wife?  Was the atmosphere in this family as poisonous as it would seem to need to be to cause the brutal murder of a young child?  Or was this all just the fevered imaginings of your typical angst-ridden teens?


I have one quibble with one of the photos that was represented as a mosaic of a cherub with the face of a young child as made by the confessed killer.  As one who pretends to artistic abilities, I know that I tend to use my own face and body, consciously or unconsciously, when creating the human form.  And if you look at the mosaic and then its creator, you will see the resemblance.  Oh, it would be nice if it were the head of the murdered child, especially because it looks decapitated, but I believe it looks ever so much like Constance.


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No Reality Here

Dating is Murder: A Novel by Harley Jane Kozak
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Contains serious spoilers - you have been warned.  This story was going okay. The previous book was better, but the author made the time-honored mistake there of relenting the sexual tension and letting the main characters hook up.  She had to undo it to free up Wollie in this next situation of date fodder for a reality show.  That's understandable.  And we were going along just fine until the earlobe business.  Yes, it was gruesome and I can tolerate a certain amount of that if we don't have to actually see it (it's just hinted at with the sausage-making imagery etc.), but no Martha-Stewartesque type person would be so inept as to let an earlobe, much less one with an identifying earring (!!!!!) get away from her.  First of all, she'd probably know better than to try to kill someone by cutting their throat.  That is way too messy.  You'd never clean that up, no matter how Martha-Stewarty you were.  If the M-S type were going to kill someone and dispose of the body, she would be much, much more organized.  Kill first and then cut up.  Much less messy.  And she just wouldn't let an earlobe get away.  An experienced cook wouldn't hack away like that.  I don't have an alternative, but this did make me set the book aside and put my head in my hands.
Also, the victim went to Pepperdine and I just don't see that type with that kind of earring, especially the son of a senator.
The characters other than that are nicely realized and likable.  The detecting stuff was delightfully screwball, but I didn't think much of the reality show stuff.  Then again, I haven't watched tv in a couple of decades now and the author is in the bidness, so I shouldn't judge that.


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Bride of Frankencozy

Dating Dead Men by Harley Jane Kozak

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I counted 60 characters, all requiring their own names. Well, except the Vons bag lady. The main characters' names are a bit contrived (mostly the Shelleys), but this was a good read.  I will definitely continue with the series.
There is a certain amount of amusement with the rush to date 50 men, but mostly this is a Cozy Thriller - if there is such a thing.  Wollie is pursued by the mob, assassins, all in the week where her greeting card shop is being evaluated by secret shoppers to see if it's upgrade material, giving Wollie the chance to buy the franchise ... with the down payment money from the dating study.  Can she keep up appearances at the shop while her schizophrenic brother, the mob, an attractive ex-con, her funkily dressed assistant, and all her dates conspire to undo all she's worked for?  Oh, and let's not forget the ferret.
Good fun and romance. Can't imagine what is left for a sequel.



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Rich As Kugel

The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Many years ago, when I was young and willing to read just about anything, I plowed through A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.  I knew nothing about the movie, although I may have seen posters.  I read ACO because I had read one of Burgess's other books and enjoyed it so I was working my way through his ouevre.  The first five pages were rough going because he had invented a futuristic cant and it was difficult to read at first.  Once I got the hang of it, though, I went back and started over.  It wasn't until I reached the end of the book (in paperback form) that I found the glossary that would have saved me so much time.  I'm glad, though, that I had the opportunity to stretch my linguistics muscles instead.
That said ... this book pushed my yiddish to the limit.  It was worth it though.  Chabon's book is rich in what I can only call wordplay and sly satire of the hard-boiled genre.  There is the main character who is an overworked policeman whose new boss is making his life miserable and his job impossible.  He has a partner who is his complete opposite.  The powers that be are on their case to get off the case.  As the story goes on, the main character no longer knows whom to trust.  Time is running out.  You know the stuff.
It might be difficult for the average goyim (say, ones outside of urban centers) to wade through.  I spent a lot of time on this book just savoring the the little twists of language.  As far as plot goes, it's the standard hard-boiled fare if you just substitute some species of hasidim for mafiosos, inuit for palestinians, and imagine an almost all-jewish cast.  Not having read anything before that was so steeped in the chosen folkways, I was amazed and delighted by little details such as guns being referred to as "sholems" [ha ha! peacemakers!] and phones as "shoyfers" [get on the horn to someone].  And if you are well-versed in yiddish, you might be a few paragraphs ahead in places.  Most of the characters are speaking yiddish to each other, but it's expressed as english.  "Woe is me!" says Landsman and the wisenheimer can retranslate it to "Vayz mir!"  There are many little treasures in this story.
The premise is that, post-holocaust, the jews were unable to take over Israel and instead were offered a temporary homeland in, of all places, Alaska.  The time is about to run out and there are some who have made other arrangements, some who listlessly do nothing, and others who have deep, dark plans.  Deeper and darker and sillier than you can imagine - but all of it drawn from contemporary headlines with parallels to history.  No, really. 



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Suspect Sympathy

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


People's imaginations never cease to amaze me.  Perhaps "amaze" isn't the exact word.  Terrify? Stun? Disgust? Repel?  I'm sure there are really bad people out there, even without Larsson providing statistics.  But, you know, I don't have to read about what they do.  The book was well-crafted (although the series of photos showing the girl's change of expression was pretty hokey) and kept you interested.  I liked the lead characters - they were fully conceptualized and realistic.  Larsson manipulated the reader beautifully, alternating between plot lines to build dramatic tension that really got my blood pressure up and me to want to read on and on and on into the night (but I didn't - I set it down right at a most critical point, the sentence ending in "hell," and let Malcolm Gladwell lull me to sleep reading from one of his books). 

But I don't think I'll be reading another one of these. 

The nice thing about mysteries, in general, is that there is a rent in the universe and someone repairs it, somehow, by the end.  All is restored to normal.  It's a safe thrill.  I just don't want to get my thrills from stories about the abuse/torture of women, children, or pets - especially when it gets graphic (I guess I must think abusing men is fair).  This is where I start worrying about people's imaginations. 
I just think people enjoy writing or reading about abuse too much.  Even when they add retribution - especially retribution in kind.  I can't blame those long, dark, Swedish winter nights for Larsson's imagination when the real life tortures of the "Disappeared" in Argentina are thrown in the balance.  What does it take to imagine torture or abuse and then write about it?  I don't have an answer.  I guess I just don't have the imagination.



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POST Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book has all the elements of the usual mystery story, but somehow seems to surprise. I didn't yell at this book once. The only quibble I have is that, unless someone in the de Luce family was an insane horticulturist that brought a sprig back as a specimen from a trip to North America, plants that produce urushiol don't grow in Britain. Okay, maybe it was a mango tree, but it sounded very much to me like it was poison ivy.
Aside from that, it was great fun! Flavia, the 11 year old chemist, is confronted with a mystery when she finds a man dying in the cucumber patch. [Note: I thought that type of poisoning was supposed to be instantaneous.] She must solve the mystery because her father has been detained, helping police with their inquiries and being fitted up. He, in turn, is covering for someone else.
Can Flavia exonerate her father before either the real murderer or one of her sadistic older sisters gets her? Read on!

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Oy! It's Raining Mrs. Danvers!

First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was hard to follow. I think the Nursery Crimes stories are more linear. Well, you get into time travel and everything goes arse over bristols, dunnit? There are so many minor plots going on, just like one of them tv shows with all the interweaving plots that are supposed to be making us smarter. I guess I just haven't been watching them.
Thursday's troubles are legion in this book: a teenage son who resolutely behaves like a teenage son and not the chronoguard genius he grew up to be that she met in other stories; she's mentoring both of her fictional selves at Jurisfiction, book reading is declining fast and the fictional world only has crackpot ideas for reviving it; apparently history is going to fold up on itself and time as we know it will end because they've neglected to invent time travel and have been merely accomplishing it on the strength of it having been invented at some point; and, Where's Jenny? Also, everyone's trying to kill her as usual.
It's just so nice to see a 50+ female character with a family and a nice job laying carpet (ha!) so active!
Am still listening to the audiobook, which is okay, but doesn't have the characterization to it that, say, Nigel Planer brings to things.

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Confessions of a PDR

The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Fforde again injects silliness for its own sake into what this time is a typical Ken Follett tale. DCI Jack Spratt is taken off a case before it even starts, which queers his bid to enter the Guild of Detectives. He is on forced medical leave until it is determined he's sane enough to continue ... in a job where a little insanity helps. The case is the escape of the same serial killer he captured previously - who will certainly want his revenge, right? But there's much more than that - National Security is involved and, worse yet, his wife doesn't know he's a PDR, a person of dubious reality. What if she finds out? Who is killing champion cucumberistas? How are those bears getting their paws on controlled substances, such as ... porridge? Where's that Dorian Gray guy who sold Spratt his car?
There were so many characters that actually appeared (as opposed to mentioned or referred to or already deceased) in this book that I filled a whole 8 1/2 x 11" sheet of paper trying to keep track of them! I'm wavering between 3 and 4 stars, but hey! The piece about Pippa's pregnancy is just so precious!
Fforde sends up so many thriller/detective story conventions in this story that you wonder what's left to skewer in the sequels!

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Virtually Good Read!

Virtually Dead by Peter May


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
My heart is still hammering! Stayed up to 1 am to finish and then couldn't sleep. I like this book so much because I'm familiar with Second Life and I can relate to a lot of it on that level (by alternately going, "Oh, yeah - that's sooo SL!" and "You Can't Do That!" It's as exciting as seeing your home town featured in a book. It's like going to see "Ghostbusters" while living in Manhattan and watching some of the filming. My SL quibbles are all minor. There's not enough bad spelling in the chat dialogue (which I always think adds to the fun if not the realism - but I can see why you don't want to put out a book full of typos), if any. There was some lipservice paid to the abominable English perpetrated by otherwise very clever builders and scripters, but it just doesn't give the savor of the Real SL experience - "LOL" - that I find so delightful and that I, too, mine for humor.
So now I have to pull myself back and look at it as a "thriller" (because apparently women write mysteries but men write thrillers). It certainly has all the elements:
betrayal - check!
false identities - check!
switchbacks -check!
"dead herrings" [personal in-joke:] - ... umm, check!
transgenders - check!
and cybersex - wowza!
(okay, that last one wasn't typical thriller material). The protagonist definitely has his share of agony: emotional, personal, financial, and professional. (On top of it all, his co-workers have a sick, sick, sick sense of humor.)
May was also forced to use the rather hackneyed Villain Monologizes To Explain What Happened, but that's a tough one to get around. The chase scenes inside SL and Michael's struggles outside were exciting, the Villain's Master Plan was needlessly but delightfully convoluted, and the ending was sweet.
In short, it was good enough that I wish there was more of it, and, good thing my therapist doesn't make me walk through pools of blood!

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The Cat Sat on the Mat ... And Took Notes.

Cat Breaking Free: A Joe Grey Mystery by Shirley Rousseau Murphy


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Once I get past the problem of talking cats: talking, crime-fighting housecats ... come to think of it, maybe I can't get past that. This is definitely a series for cat lovers: soppy, anthropomorphizing cat lovers. Okay, I pretend my cats talk, but I don't go much beyond "Why don't you feed me?" and "Pet me, damn you, pet me!" and "I. Hate. You." I don't imagine some rich, inner life wherein they can reason, read (how does a cat learn to read when human children take years to learn and develop fluidity?), discuss clues, or call each other on cell phones.
I mean, try to imagine a cat manipulating a cell phone. I can hardly punch those buttons and I have opposable thumbs!
But once you get past that ...
And I also had trouble with the names of characters. Murphy has a tendency to give lead female characters masculine names: Ryan and Charlie. I'm still not sure about Scotty. Might be a woman, might not. This makes keeping track of people very confusing, even with the list I made of people and the names of their pets. It's a rather extensive list.
But once you get past that - no, really. It was an interesting mystery about, gosh, real crime! Real crime like burglary! Oh, and some murder. It might have been interesting as well if some humans were actually involved in detection! More than, say, informing the cats. Let's just be glad that these cats don't have opposable thumbs or they'd be running southern California.
I think now I'll read something more sensible, like Fforde's The Big Over Easy.

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Put It All Together, It Spells MADRE

Gator A-Go-Go: A Novel by Tim Dorsey


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Florida's manic son and America's most fun-loving serial killer, Serge Storms, is at it again. This time he is making a documentary of the Spring Break tradition in his beloved state. On the way, he becomes lovingly entwined in an organized crime family vengeance. I thought it wasn't much of a mystery and had that dejá vu feeling one gets when stories get repetitive and old characters resurface. I was over a third of the way in before it seemed to take on anything different.
But that's why I read them: the mayhem, the inventive gruesomeness of it all that makes me really wonder about Tim Dorsey. Now, I think I saw another one on the rack ...

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Sell No Crime Before Its Time

The Critic: The Second of the Enzo Files by Peter May


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is my first mystery by Peter May - a mystery for die-hard oenophiles that takes place in France's Gaillac wine country. This was good stuff, if you don't mind the tastings with the vanilla from the oak barrel and the raspberries and other drivel they put on the wine label to lead the witness. You do learn more about making wine than you might be inclined to know.
Enzo Macleod is a mostly believable sleuth with the most incredibly bad luck in women. May blends the gruesome with the very amusing quite well. I had a flashback to my juvenile experiences with John D. MacDonald, but this was better - more grown up. Travis always had babes, and had a lot more success with them. Enzo is the hapless sort that can have feast and famine at the same time, and isn't the tantalizing frustration that much more entertaining?
This book also answers the time-worn question of "What is worn under the kilt?"
I am looking forward to reading the Virtually Dead book.

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The Name's Fandolin - Erast Fandolin

The Winter Queen by Boris Akunin


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
My opinion on this went up one point when I got to the discussion questions at the end. I had searched in vain through the review blurbs on the back for any mention of humor. Now I am willing to accept that the author meant for some of this to be funny, not just naive.
The lead character, Erast Fandolin, is young, credulous, and, while intelligent, he jumps to conclusions and acts impulsively without thinking things all the way through. Lucky for him that he has trained himself to hold his breath and his vanity causes him to wear a corset or he would be dead several times over. He's a bumbling but very lucky 19th century James Bond (which his experience at a game of "stoss" [remarkably like baccarat:] only reinforces).
The incident of two young men playing "American Roulette" leads to a conspiracy of global proportions, taking Fandolin out of Mother Russia where he discovers that civilization has spread beyond those borders. It's also lucky that his family used to be wealthy and he had learned fluent German, French, and English. The book is chock-full of period atmosphere of the highly stratified Russian imperial society, making it quite refreshing from the usually western european mystery adventures.
The more I think of it, the more amusing it was. And now that I'm prepared to think of these stories as humorous as well as suspenseful, I think I could read another one of the series.

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Under the Magnifying Glass

Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her by Melanie Rehak


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Wha-at? You mean there was no Carolyn Keene? As a child I devoured the Nancy Drew books, like most girls, re-reading them and demanding more (to my mother's horror - she wanted me to go to a library and get them, but how could you read and re-read as I did with books if they weren't right there on your shelf? I have solved this problem in adulthood by working in libraries!). I remember hearing that there was a woman behind them, or maybe a man who started it and his wife (turned out to be his daughter) who ground them out under the name of Keene. After that I lost track of the whos and wheres and now have learned that there was a hard-writing, tough woman reporter in the midwest who did the fleshing out of book outlines provided. The syndicate then edited them or suggested edits.
This book is certainly more than one would want to know about the making of Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and other older series books. I guess you could then call it "thorough." It's disheartening to read about family squabbles over money when your associations with these books hearken to mythologies like the Easter Bunny. Harriet's sister Edna married and bowed out of the day-to-day running of the syndicate, but managed to pinch pennies from a distance. Having had a sister, I can just imagine ...
I was also right in preferring the oldest versions, the blue books with the orange print on the outside. Later editions of Nancy Drew were dumbed down, eviscerated for political correctness, and even later reduced to advertising for the shallowest of consumerism. The love of the oldest versions led me to historical fiction and period mysteries. I now prefer a little more distance in my reading. Also, the educational bits in the books (which I actually noticed as a child reader and appreciated, "Oh! I'm learning something, too!") were intentional insertions.
Disdain for series literature started early and still exists, but the nay-sayers still don't learn the lesson: kids enjoy reading them, want to read them, and they actually help young readers develop the fluidity of reading, which prepares kids for the meatier stuff they will also have to read. Whether they go on to enjoy more serious "litticher" later is up to them, but they will already be hooked on the printed word.
The book climaxes in a courtroom smack-down (if the meeting of the two long-separated, elderly ladies can be so described) when the original writer (Mildred Wirt Benson) and the Stratemeyer Syndicate head (Harriet Stratemeyer Adams) face off while Harriet attempts to defend her split from Grosset and Dunlap. They each believed themselves to be the originator, the writer of the Nancy Drew stories. Harriet went so far as to refer to Nancy as her daughter. Grosset and Dunlap had stupidly mined the Syndicate's catalog and resisted sharing even a little bit more of the gold with the Syndicate. Harriet left them for a better deal with Simon & Schuster (who virtually raped and pillaged the Nancy Drew franchise after Harriet's death, relentlessly launching watered-down series after watered-down series and never achieved the same 50 year success of the originals).
The "original" Nancy Drew series (as well as Hardy Boys) have been published in facsimile form by Applewood Books, and Good on 'em!
Long live the Nancy Drew in all of us, the real one, the one that captured our hearts in our youth, the time when our hearts were there for the taking.

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