When we first meet Will Rees in A Simple Murder, he is pursuing his son to a nearby Shaker community.
David has run away from his aunt’s rough treatment. When the boy was eight, his mother died. Rees drops his son on his sister and leaves, ostensibly to pick up weaving jobs. The truth is, though, that Rees, besides grieving the devastating loss of his wife, is also dealing with a huge amount of guilt. He is running away. And David views that as abandonment and it takes many years, and a lot of work, before the estrangement is resolved.
Through the series, we see Rees evolve from an indifferent father, at best, to an engaged and caring father. In Cradle to Grave, he and Lydia adopt several orphaned children, increasing the number of children to six.
By the Long Shadow of Murder, Rees and Lydia have a little girl of their own and she is pregnant with another child.
And Jerusha, the eldest of the adopted kids, is now in her late teens and hoping to attend The Litchfield Female Academy to become a teacher. Although Rees would never crush her dream, he hopes Jerusha will stay home. He wants to keep his children close.
In my head, I imagined Rees’s evolving – growing up if you will – from a fairly self-centered man to a husband and father whose core is his family.
Simon Rouge, Will Rees’s frenemy in the Will Rees mysteries, is the Constable in the village. Why a constable? We don’t use that system in the United States.
Oh, but we did, once upon a time.
In the beginning, when Boston, New York and Philadelphia were just colonial villages, night watchmen and constables were appointed to keep the peace and provide law enforcement. Constables were, at first, generally unpaid or paid very poorly. Few people were interested in taking on a hazardous job with little pay and low status so the quality of those that did apply was poor.I imagine that little crime was prevented and few crimes were solved.
As the northern cities grew thanks to an influx of immigrants, and dealt with increasing crime, the southern states established patrols to control the large enslaved population.
The spread of people to the frontier created new problems for crime control. In 1789, the US Marshals were created as the first federal law enforcement agency. In1823, the Texas Rangers was formed to protect American settlers from Indian attack in the Mexican territory of Texas.
In 1790, only two US cities had populations over 25,000. By 1820, both New York and Philadelphia had populations of over 100,000. The ability of night watchmen and constables could not keep up.
So, where did our current system of policing come from? Well, just like the system of night watchmen and constables (and sheriffs too), the US copies the ‘modern’ police force of London’s Metropolitan Police force, set up by law in 1829. New York City is the first American city to set up a unified, prevention-oriented police force in 1845. In 1853 they adopted uniforms.
So, in the late 1700s and early 1800s, Rouge would still be a constable, poorly paid and with very little authority. This is also why he earns his living, not as a law enforcement officer, but as a tavern owner.
I thought I’d read all of the Holmes/Russell mysteries, only to discover this one; A Letter of Mary.
Mary Russell and her husband, retired detective Sherlock Holmes, receive an old friend and archaeologist at their Sussex estate. Dorothy Ruskin presents them with an old manuscript that she excavated in Palestine. It appears to be from Mary Magdalene and suggests she is one of Jesus’s apostles. The letter appears genuine but surely it couldn’t be. Could it?
Both Russell and Holmes are bored with their current lives and agree to look into the letter further. Then Dorothy Ruskin is murdered. Now the case suddenly achieves significant more importance. The game is afoot!
Although it is a bit of a stretch to imagine Sherlock Holmes married, these books work. I particularly enjoy the antiquated style Laurie King employs; it is so appropriate to the era. Besides, I love the archeological mysteries; Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody mysteries are still among my favorites.
This also has a clever mystery. Highly Recommended.
Will Rees, the main character in my mystery The Long Shadow of Murder, is a traveling weaver, called factors. Like many professions then, weaving required an apprenticeship of about seven years. (This may explain the ‘Luddites”, many of them weavers who saw their professions disappearing.) About nine spinners were required to keep a weaver in business. And looms were big, heavy and expensive, hence the word heir-loom.
In colonial times, and stretching into the early USA, larger towns, like Williamsburg, had a resident professional weaver and cloth from overseas did come into the ports. Smaller towns might have a weaver who also farmed. The further away these towns were located, the less imported cloth the women had access to. In the beginning, this expensive cloth was expensive also although, as the Salem ships brought cloth from India, this cloth dropped in price. By 1802, when Long Shadow takes place, Rees is facing a huge drop in his business.
Besides the traveling weavers, other professions took to the roads. Some men made brooms. This was a craft the Shakers took on as well; they sold their wares which included brooms, whips, boxes and other items, from wagons. Tinkers, who not only sold pots and pans but mended them as well, were also a familiar sight.
In these agrarian times, the goal was to make enough money to buy a farm. Usually, once a man had a good farm, he settled, at least for most of the year. Although still a weaver, and a reluctant farmer, Rees has begun to focus more on the farm where he and Lydia and their children live.
Some of the accounts from the women married to such men speak poignantly of the loneliness and isolation, to say nothing of the struggles in keeping a farm going by themselves.
I chose this mystery for the book discussion group at the library. We had a very lively discussion.
Olivia Watson moves into a house in Knightsbridge, New York. One night, she sees a man appear at her door and then disappear through a wall. After she sees him three more times, she speaks to him. He responds and they discover they are living in the same house, only, while Olivia is in 2014 Stephen Blackwell is in 1934. A detective on the police force, he is currently involved in investigating the murder of the bank manager and the theft of a significant amount of money.
His investigation proceeds as his relationship with Olivia progresses to a tentative friendship.
The settings, particularly the 1934 world, are wonderfully rendered. Some of the touches are really clever. They discover that they both know some of the same people. But Stephen knows Annabel, for example, as a fourteen-year-old, while Olive knows her as an old woman. Unsettling to say the least. Fun and thought provoking. Recommended.
I have been a fan of Barbara Hambly’s since she wrote fantasy and science fiction. (The series about the Dog Wizard is an especial favorite.) I love the Benjamin January books.
January is a free man of color in New Orleans. Although trained as a doctor, as a black man he is not allowed to practice so he supports his family as a musician.
In 1840, William Harry Harrison, an Indian fighter, was running for president. January pays only a little attention to politics but since the run up to a large rally in New Orleans is filled with balls and other events, he is busy playing. One day after a fist fight between two suitor for a beautiful flirt named Marie- Joyeuse Maginot, she is found murdered and the only black person there is promptly arrested. January immediately begins investigating to save his friend.
A story that begins with an attack on January by an escaped slave (for his clothes) ends with January racing across roofs to prevent an assassination.
As usual, Hambly’s mystery is excellent. But, also as usual, what strikes me most is the difficulty of living in a slave state as a free man. January always carries his papers, and even then risks being sold into slavery and possibly ending up in the cane fields. A smart man, he must hide his intelligence from the wealthy white men who hire him as a musician. This dynamic gives the Hambly mysteries an added dimension beyond the historical facts, great characters and wonderful puzzles.
In the newest Will Rees mystery, I look at several serious themes. One is PTSD. Although not called that in 1802, or for almost three centuries afterward, I am sure that it existed. We know that ‘battle fatigue’ was PTSD. (In WWI, women went around handing white feathers for cowardice to able-bodied men home from war, no doubt making already traumatized men feel worse.)
I remember working with a patron at a library in the nineties. A car backfiring outside caused the man to drop to the floor in reaction. He was the right age to be a Vietnam vet. It was scary for all of us, especially him. His wife had to come and collect him.
In The Long Shadow of Murder, we discover that Rees joined the Continental Army when he was sixteen and served at Jockey Hollow and Valley Forge, both of which have come down to us as beyond terrible. Ephraim Sewell, a young man who is considering joining the Shakers, was even younger, following his brother into war at eleven.
Both are haunted by their wartime experiences. Although Rees has managed to put the memories aside and move forward with a wife and family, Ephraim still has nightmares. The stew of grief and guilt has kept him fixed at that point in time and cost him his family and his farm.
Other characters are also suffering. One from events that occur in A Murder on Principle; the other from the behavior of the British soldiers during the Revolutionary War. As I describe, they took everything they could, stealing chicken and livestock, commandeered people’s houses, and raped women. The resentment felt by the colonists increased accordingly.
TSDAlthough the Revolutionary War happened twenty five years before the action in Long Shadow, and the murder in this novel, the trauma experienced by the different characters continue to affect, not only the characters themselves, but also all the people around them.
After a week’s vacation in Maine, I am resuming my usual schedule. During this week, I read the latest by C. S. Harris.
Who will remember is Harris’ twentieth Sebastian St. Cyr mystery. I’ve read all of these books and enjoyed them all.
1816, the year without a summer. A young ragged boy appears at St. Cyr’s home and tells him there is a dead body hanging by one foot in a ruined chapel. St. Cyr investigates and discovers it is. What’s more, it is a Nobel, brother of one of the Regent’s boon companions. The victim, Farnsworth, is well-known as a crusader against crime, sin, immorality.
But as St. Cyr investigates, he discovers Farnsworth may not be the good and pure man many believe.
And what is the link with the Frenchman who may be an assassin sent by Marie-Therese, daughter of Louis and Marie-Antoinette, and the sole remaining member of her family?
The setting – Regency England with glaring economic inequality – and the poor who struggle to survive is beautifully rendered. Another winner! Highly recommended.
First, a shoutout to let everyone know I’ll be at Clifton Park Mall this Saturday, June 21, 10 – 4. There will be a lot of authors there and so a lot of fun.
This week I read two very good books.
The first was the new one by well-established author, Anne Perry. The One Thing More takes place during the French Revolution on the eve of the execution of the King. Celie, born into minor aristocracy, is now a laundress. She is also working with a group trying to arrange the King’s escape. Several other people, including the owner of the house, are not only involved but leaders. But the plans are halted when Bernave, the house’s owner and the leader of the plot, is murdered during an incursion by a mob. Who murdered Bernave and why? Now the house is surrounded by the police, including the dogged Menou. Celie, in an effort to connect with another plotter, has to go over the roofs.
The murderer and the motive are not identified until almost the final page after some pretty hair raising scenes. Perry has not lost her touch. Recommended.
Death upon a Star is Amy Patricia Meade’s newest mystery. Evelyn Galloway travels to Hollywood in the late thirties to work as a script girl for Alfred Hitchcock on Rebecca. On Evelyn’s first day, she meets a kind older actor who had been a silent movie star. They make arrangements to meet for lunch the following day but he doesn’t show. Evelyn can’t let it go and begins her own sub rosa investigation.
Meade’s trademark humor and interesting characters are on full display but the real star is the setting. From the activity in the studio to the long ago stars to Alfred Hitchcock himself, Meade hits every note perfectly. Although not as funny as the Country Living series, Death Upon a Star is charming and fun. It deserves a wide readership. Recommended.
Game over at Guild Hall in the third in the Vermont Country Living Mystery series. In this outing, the Buckleys are invited to attend at Game Supper at the Guild Hall. Not a sports game supper or a board game supper but a game meat supper. The object is to sample all of the game recipes: venison stew, bear meatballs and the like.
The supper does not turn out as planned. An young man, Mudd Morrison, angry that his ‘gleaned’ meat (read roadkill) is not included, confronts organizer Bessent. He is sent on his way but a short while later Bessent drops dead, poisoned.
Later that night, Stella sees a light at the guild hall as someone searches Bessent’s office.
She begins to dig into the mystery, discovering that Bessent’s game supper has created quite a few enemies, from the exhausted volunteers, to Mudd Morrison, to the environmentalist who is worried about sustainability, even the local priest.
Then, in the middle of all this, Stella’s mother arrives unexpectedly with a catastrophe of her own.
And I can’t forget the talking dog. Yes, seriously. Truly funny.
The Nick and Nora Charles vibe is alive and well, the characters are offbeat but never implausible, the mystery is intriguing. I love this series and can’t wait for the fourth installment. A must read.
