Whodunit?

peter mayle & submissions open

 

SUBMISSIONS:

1. poetry contest sponsored by case western reserve u. and the cleveland museum of art. check their web sites

2. All Michigan Writers are welcome to contribute to our Annual Anthology, "Written In The Mitten"!
Details at www.HeronBayBooks.com

http://joangelfand.com/2012/12/scarecrow-press-anthology-call-for-submissions-2/
3. Women, Work, and the Web: How the Web Creates Entrepreneurial Opportunities
Book Publisher: Scarecrow Press
4. the LITTLE magazine on the blog is now accepting submissions in poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction. send to lavingroup@aol.com

 COMMENTS:
'I love "Eloquent Tattoo"!  Mary Beth is doing great . ' from genie, someplace in california

 

THE OTHER ARTS:

belated first friday kudos to craig joseph and the super use he has made of his translations gallery space. three of us stopped by first friday and were truly impressed, as we were by the superbowl dinner we had at benders right afterwards!!

 

& more praise heaped on 2nd april and their ladies' night out followed by fab dinner for three more of us fun people at lucca's.

 

BOOKS (or in this case, BOOK):

 

The Marseille Caper by Peter Mayle has almost no plot (an englishman, a frenchman, and an american each want to build on the same marseille beach), no character development, and none of the other literary necessities. what it does have is the food, the sun, and the wine of southern france. and that's enough for most of us, especially in the middle of an ohio winter. if you feel like a romp by the sea, this, as are other mayle novels, is the book for you.

 

it is 210 pages at $24 (doesn't tell us how many euros), and is published by alfred knopf.

 

whodunits by fairstein and meyers + dorian gray & lavin

BOOKS:

Classic Calls the Shots, crime in the fast lane by Amy Myers is a mystery novel for antique car lovers. i am not one. we had an antique rolls for a while and it certainly was fun to go out for rides in it, but that's as far as my interest goes.

i ask myself, would i like this novel better if an andy warhol or a chagall had been stolen, any object i might have a slight emotional or aesthetic attachment to. i don't think so. a 1935 auburn boattail speedster disappears from the site of a movie production in kent, england. the mystery is solved in 198 pages.

the publisher is severn house.

 

Night Watch by Linda Fairstein is a great deal of fun in the beginning. this  might be because i've spent some happy times in the south of france, where the novel starts. alexandra cooper is there visiting boyfriend luc rouget. luc is a famous restaurateur, so famous that alexandra and he go off to n.y. to start a new lutece. they keep falling over bodies, rather bodies keep falling over them. drugs are quite often involved. ms. fairstein throws in a lot of n.y. restaurant history and other bits of special knowledge that the reader may love--or not.

the book runs 398 pages and is published by dutton, penguin group.

 

 

MOVIE:

Oscar Wilde with colin firth (what was he thinking?). The film received mixed to negative reviews. Rotten Tomatoes, the film reviews aggregator, gave the film 42%, which is probably more than it deserves, though there is an unintentional comedic aspect to it. 

 

WRITING HINTS:

“Cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can’t fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.”
—William S. Burroughs

“All readers come to fiction as willing accomplices to your lies. Such is the basic goodwill contract made the moment we pick up a work of fiction.”
—Steve Almond, WD

 

HELP WANTED:

betterbuilt.com moved my heading for the LITTLE magazine on the blog to typepad, but not to the rep. and when i wanted to use a photo (i'm blowing a huge balloon, which does tie in with my column and makes the column seem odd without it). i couldn't get it on either site. how do i do this?

 

Submissions are open for the december issue of the LITTLE magazine on the blog.

 

audreylavin.com http://bit.ly/OhAudrey  

carl and audrey meet mother angelica/ not the usual blog

                                                      Madre Angelica

 

     “A day of prayer will be offered for Audrey Lavin” read the note from our new bud, Mother Angelica. Not the kind of message this nice Jewish girl usually receives.

 

     My husband Carl and I met the Reverend Mother Mary Angelica by accident at the Hotel Los Espanoles in Santiago, Chile. What immediately drew us together was not exactly psychic recognition or spiritual conversation, though until recently, Madre Angelica broadcast a spiritual message each week on Eternal Word Television Network, which she had founded. No, what drew us together was the fact that the three of us were speaking English.

 

     Contrary to what many tourists think, everyone does not speak English all over the world, certainly not in the small sea-side town of Puerto Montt, Chile, where Carl and I had been living. After a month or so of stumbling around in Spanish, it was a pleasure for us to be in the capital city and hear our own language spoken with our own easily understood, mid-western accents.

 

     Carl and I were taking a week-end’s infusion of big city life after a period of working in Puerto Montt, sometimes called the back-packing capital of the world. Actually only Carl was working. He was the International Executive Service Corps consultant for the Ganasur Meat Processing Company. I was supposed to be teaching at the local university. When I got to Puerto Montt with half my baggage in text books, I found my ‘university’ was more of a fishing trade school than an academic college and had absolutely zero need of or interest in any of my specialties. It happens.

 

     So there we were that lovely February day (as latitude 42 south runs through Puerto Montt and latitude 42 north runs through Cleveland, so February in Ohio equals August in Chile) experimenting with a crisp Chilean vino blanco and un sandwich de jamon y queso. It was a late lunch even for Chile, and we were the only ones in the charming, below street level restaurant, when in walked a large, commanding nun, wearing the brown habit of the Franciscan order. Surrounded by interviewers and flood lights, she was nothing like the (almost) nun we were most familiar with, Julie Andrews in Sound of Music.  

 

     When the Reverened Mother’s entourage dispersed, the three of us who remained started chatting in the way that mid-westerners will. It turned out, as these things never do, that Madre Angelica was from Canton, Ohio; so were we. Not just from Canton. Both she and Carl were born there. Not many Chilean tourists could say that! She had been instrumental in the growth of the Santa Clara Monastery, walking distance from our house. She asked us to stop by to give the nuns who lived there a message of love and blessings from her. We said we would and, of course, some time later, we did.

 

     Madre Angelica started to reminisce about what she missed from Canton, which brought about more coincidences, if not conclusive proof that we were soul-mates. What she really missed was Sugardale hot dogs.

 

     At that time, Carl was president of the Sugardale Provision Company.

 

     Here is part of a letter he sent to her when she and we returned to the States: “Dear Mother Angelica, when you mentioned you hadn’t had a good hot dog since leaving Canton and Sugardale territory, our hearts went out to you. No one should have to go through life deprived of quality hot dogs. Therefore, to at least temporarily assuage the deprivation, we are enclosing a few pounds of Sugardale hot dogs. We hope they arrive in good health and that you remain in good health for many years to come to carry on your good works.”

 

     In return, the nuns of Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in Birmingham, Alabama, offered a day of prayer for us. It included Remembrance at Mass, Divine Office, Rosary, Adoration Hour, and Prayerful Good Wishes.

 

     Fair Trade, we thought.

pounded by the hunger games and thinking, fast and slow

 

 

audreylavin.com  http://bit.ly/OhAudrey  

 

In a message dated 5/17/2012 8:34:22 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, Lavingroup@aol.com writes:

i have a double confession to make today.

confession #1: i am not going to finish the three novels that comprise the hunger games series by suzanne collins.

confession #2: i am not going to finish the 414 pages that comprise the tome thinking, fast and slow by daniel kahneman.

 

do you, dear reader, feel guilty when you start a book or a magazine and don't finish reading it? i do. but i have to put my guilt aside and get on with my life. i'm sure it shows a great deal of hubris on my part, but i feel that i get the message(s)  of both authors (collins and kahneman) without reading every word they've written in these four books.

 

here's an idea of the dent i've made. i saw the hunger games movie. i know that true aficionados think movie going is a poor excuse for not reading the book. it was fine with me. i got the main characters, district 12, the capitol, the good forest and the bad forest, the mockingjay pin so beautifully made by dana schneider, many other symbols (mainly food, ex. pan-em), and the three main messages.

 

these three messages repeated in all three books have enormous appeal to teenagers (target audience) and everyone else. the micro message has to do with finding the self and staying true to it. the macro message has to do with the evilness of oppression and dictatorship. the over-all message collins  issues is a dire warning. stop and look where we are, where we might be going. so if i missed the murder of one more tribute....  

 

back to the progress i made with the novels. i read all of vol 2, catching fire. i can't believe that none of katnis's enemies wouldn't ask for proof when told she is pregnant. didn't the other contestants or the judges think the announcement  possibly was a sympathy ploy? i read 188 pages of mockingjay, the final novel. i know that katnis and peeta end up together, that green grows from ruins as does their love. after all, i've read other novels.

 

i tried.

 

and i tried, too with daniel kahneman's thinking fast and slow. at first i was filled with admiration for kahneman, admiration for him as a thinker, writer, and teacher.

 

then i began to notice the constant use of wysiatti (what you see is all that there is) and regression to the mean as only two of the terms coined by kahneman and his fellow social scientists in this jargon filled book.  in addition to the jargon (and remember i'm an english professor. i can jargon-speak to compete with anyone) is the proving and disproving of concepts without acknowledging their background. for example, wysiatti is a replay of,  ''They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when  they can see nothing but sea.' -Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman (1561-1626)
.

the third mental irritant is his constant use of phrases, such as 'now everyone would make these two guesses,' but .... 'this is the right answer that maybe 2% would recognize.' most of the time i was not the 'everyone' making the two guesses nor the 2% naming the correct one. i was off in some other direction that was never recognized as a possibility.

 

maybe if i had read more than 191 pages, i would have  a different opinion. i'll wait until i can discuss it or readers can set me straight. please.

whodunits? black swan and the sauvignon secret +soon new 'eloquent' murder mystery

 

three notes of interest: 

 

1.  Novelist Fights the Tide by Opening a Bookstore, article in today's new york times By Julie Bosman Nashville's reading faithful have found a savior in Ann Patchett, the best-selling author, whose Parnassus Books will open Wednesday.

2. here's a flash fiction contest that runs from November 14 through December 16.  An entry must contain the line "but those aren't your shoes."  For complete submission guidelines, go to http://columbuscoop.org/writing_contests/

 

3. my own good news is that the third novel in my eloquent series, eloquent tattoo, is now in the hands of the publisher, anaphora press, where it will be edited and ready for the book stores by the end of 2011 or the beginning of 2012.

 

meanwhile, i finished reading two more murder mysteries this week, two novels that are written for a special reader, who is not necessarily me.

 

chris knopf's Black Swan (A Sam Acquillo Hamptons Mystery) brings up a recurring problem for writers of mysteries. if you, the author, want to play fair with your audiences, you have to give them clues. the problem is when is enough, enough? by page 25 when the person who turns out to be the murderer is introduced, i knew who it was (carefully hiding gender here). i also saw through the code writing immediately, and i'm the kind of reader who goes with the flow. i don't try to figure out mysteries. i enjoy the unfolding.

 

another problem for me with black swan is that it is too much a man's mystery. i'm not sure why. it's about sailing and the computer business. it is all unraveled by sam acquillo, who i've read about before and enjoyed more, and his compliant girlfriend amanda. by far the most interesting and most fully realized character is his dog, eddie. i think i've enjoyed the other acquillo books more because they all take place in the hamptons. this one is on the ship he is delivering and block island.

 

if i'm counting right, this is knopf's sixth mystery, his fourth sam acquillo hamptons novel. it is published by the permanent press and is 304 pages.

 

the second recently read novel to be discussed today combines two of my favorite topics--wine and murder. not long ago i gave The Viognier Vendetta: A Wine Country Mystery (Wine Country Mysteries) a thumbs up. it is an earlier mystery in the wine country mystery series by ellen crosby. this newer tale, The Sauvignon Secret: A Wine Country Mystery (Wine Country Mysteries), is the sixth in the series. it also stars lucie montgomery who owns a vineyard and her ex? beau quinn santori, who is the former manager of that vineyard.

 

the action moves from northern virginia to the california wine country as lucie tries to solve one or two murders of members of a secret society, at he same time solving the problems of her love life. not a complex novel, no lingering after taste, certainly no explosion in the mouth or light hints of berries and peppers. you might enjoy it.

 

it is published by scribner and is 256 pages.

 

audreylavin.com         http://bit.ly/flTthc

icelandic whodunit? by indridason

for those of you who are interested in education, take a look at seth lavin's CHICAGO SCHOOLS WONKS, a compendium of articles, legislative news, and comments from and/or about others who are also interested in education. it is a newsletter directed to chicago area readers, but much, if not most of it, is applicable to lay and professional educators every where.

 

earlier today i spotted tom wachunas checking out some of the canton art museum's permanent exhibit, i suppose for his excellent artwatch blog. be on the look out.

 

while my husband and i were visiting iceland, one of the books i read was outrage by arnaldur indridason. i have previously read and written about in this blog jar city and hypothermia. the lead detective in those cases, detective erlendur is now away in a remote part of iceland (believe me, any part of iceland outside of reykjavik is a 'remote part of iceland.'), so detective elinborg, his side kick in the previous novels, is given the case. she already has family and job issues to deal with.

 

in my review of hypothermia, i talked about indridason's frequent use of street names as a way of emphasizing the icelandishness of the novel. in outrage, it is food, whether cooking, recipes, or eating food and specifically icelandic food becomes important, constantly reminding this reader where she is.

 

the novel starts with the finding of a murdered young man, runolfur, who is wearing a woman's T-shirt, a woman's shawl lies under the bed, and a large dose of rohypnol, the date-rape drug, is in his system. in addition to the interest in watching elinborg solve this crime partially by her understanding of the difference between the cultures of city and small town iceland, i found reading it while in iceland to be absolutely fascinating.

 

for example, when my husband and i went to the first jail in reykjavik, we were told that only 12000 criminals are in jail today out of a country of 300,000 people. i knew that the crime rate was low, but that is very low. when i read outrage, i read over and over again indridason's almost-tirades against the law that is so easy on rapists. then i put together the short jail sentences given rapists with the low figures for inhabitants of the prisons. maybe that figure is not 100% to the good. maybe some of the penalties should be longer.

 

i know nothing about icelandic law, except what halldor laxness tells me in iceland's bell about the awful, awful 17th century. my point is that fiction, as well as fact, can make a reader think and question perceived opinions, in this case what i first thought of as low crime rate.

 

anna yates is the translator of this 281 page novel. it is published by harville secker and is a good read, especially if you are going to or have returned from a wonderful visit to iceland.

 

audreylavin.com       http://bit.ly/flTthc

laura childs, carola dunn, & benjamin black: two cozies and a real murder mystery

the first of the three novels i am going to discuss today is scones & bones, sub-titled a tea shop mystery, by laura childs. i scrolled back over previous blogs to see if i had reviewed this cozy before, but couldn't find any mention of it. maybe i reviewed another in the series. scones & bones is #12.

 

from now on, i'm gong to put titles of all books discussed or of all authors discussed in the heading for easier reference, even though it's much more fun to write headlines i think are clever!

 

if you are going to read a cozy cozy, this is one to read, especially if you are like me and you actually enjoy a cuppa and scones. indigo tea shop owner theodosia browning is again the lead detective. the rest of the characters and setting (charleston) continue to be charming; the plot is thin, but it's there; and the novel isn't too long, a one-sitting easy read at 279 pages.

 

it is published by berkley prime crime

 

second is another cozy, the case of the murdered muckraker by carola dunn. this is another of those daisy dalrymple stories. it takes place in 1923. daisy is not as interesting, clever, or cute as her author thinks she is. this time around, she is in new york .i think she and fletcher come to the u.s. on their honeymoon. he works in  washington and she works in n.y. wait, that's not very logical, is it?

 

 daisy, that little devil, gets in trouble again. she finds another murder and eventually the murderer. this is the tenth in the series, not as good as the earlier books, which i haven't raved about. it is ten years old, perhaps dated.

 

it is 261 pages and published by st. martin's minotaur.

 

we end with the third book to be discussed, elegy for april by benjamin black.

april, a junior doctor at a local hospital, has disappeared and no one seems to care except her friend phoebe griffin. it turns out that phoebe wasn't as close a friend as she thought she was, but her concern is real. phoebe is the daughter of quirke.

 

this is black's third crime novel starring quirke (we are never given a first name. he's like will and kate, though they aren't given last names.) and his search for sobriety and a missing woman in 50s dublin. the novel is quite good on ambiance, character, and plot until we get to the end where it is all pushed together with what i consider corny motive, etc. black does clue us in earlier as to what we are to expect when he has a page on passion and family,but it seems to me his ending is an easy out for what otherwise would be an excellent novel.

mr. black can write.

 

it is 293 pages and published by henry holt and co.

editors still needed and 'rotten to the core,' more cozy than most

i'm still getting e-mails about my posting, where have all the editors gone. and i'm still noticing novels that could have used more editorial assistance. i'm assuming here that some was given.

 

for example, in my critique of john grisham's the confession, i wrote of the book's being a polemic or a diatribe. it could have been saved from being either with a firm hand x-ing out lines and paragraphs. the book is 418 pages; it would have been much more effective if some editor had held grisham down to 350.

 

forgetting that i had already read and reviewed val mc dermid's fever of the bone

(note to audrey: write blog on the number of mystery novels with 'bone' in the title). i borrowed it from the library again. this time (only ten pages until i realized my error) i noticed a couple of 'carol was much better than him' type errors in the first few pages. someone at harper's could have notice them, too.

 

i really do like cozies. i really do not like cozies with recipes. the recipes at the end seem to me an apology, 'i didn't write a very good book, but here, try these, they'll make up for it.'

 

sheila connolly's rotten to the core (with seven pages of apple recipes) is the second in her 'orchard mystery' series.

 

the term 'rotten to the core' was first recorded in 1804. books, recordings, even a movie have carried the title since then.

 

connolly's cores belong to an apple orchard in the fictive, maybe mythical would be better, town of granford ma where meg corey is beginning a life as a farmer, refinishing her own floors, driving a tractor, taking care of two goats and a cat, and learning quite a bit about organic farming. the reader learns right along with her. the result is a sweet informative novel featuring meg and a nice guy named seth, who rents from her and who with her form the center of the world's most static romance.

 

the novel is published by berkley prime crime and is 289 pages plus those damn recipes.

 

for those of you who are interested in writing, i'll close with a quote from steve martin in an interview from the saturday review section of the london times. this was sent by my correspondent a.s. in edinburgh. mr. martin, who is the author of shop girl and an object of beauty, two novels i thoroughly enjoyed reading, talks here about writing prose. in fact, he is taking about self-editing, an act we writers have to take more seriously. 'Sometimes in prose you're essentially talking to yourself, but talking is not prose. You have to figure out when you are talking aloud and turn it into sentences.'

 

audreylavin.com  tr.im/whodunit

how to write, vargas llosa, and two whodunits: martin walker's bruno, & carola dunn's daisy

because readers of this blog are by self-selection interested in reading and writing literature, i start today with  two paragraphs taken from mario vargas lllosa's acceptance of his pulitzer prize:

Reading changed dreams into life and life into dreams and placed the universe of literature within reach of the boy I once was. My mother told me the first things I wrote were continuations of the stories I read because it made me sad when they concluded or because I wanted to change their endings. And perhaps this is what I have spent my life doing without realizing it: prolonging in time, as I grew, matured, and aged, the stories that filled my childhood with exaltation and adventures.

Literature is a false representation of life that nevertheless helps us to understand life better, to orient ourselves in the labyrinth where we are born, pass by, and die. It compensates for the reverses and frustrations real life inflicts on us, and because of it we can decipher, at least partially, the hieroglyphic that existence tends to be for the great majority of human beings, principally those of us who generate more doubts than certainties and confess our perplexity before subjects like transcendence, individual and collective destiny, the soul, the sense or senselessness of history, the to and fro of rational knowledge.

 

i have almost finished vargas llosa's Captain Pantoja and the Special Service: A Novel, an interesting novel, which i will discuss later. for now i will say it is interesting because of the many literary experiments vargas llosa brings to it and because it is a story of prostitutes set in the hot and steamy amazon jungle, yet manages, at times, to be boring!

 

for today, though, i will write a few lines about two mysteries:  one a thumbs up novel and one a thumbs down.

 

i have read and reviewed a few of carola dunn's daisy dalrymple detective stories before.  didn't i realize what a poor writer she is? or could it be that Die Laughing (Daisy Dalrymple Mysteries, No. 12), the twelfth in the series, is the worst? daisy continues to be an honorable and a writer in 1920s england. but now she is married to inspector alex fletcher. there used to be the slightest sexual tension between them (greeting each other with big grins). now it is gone. this doesn't say much for the marriage or for the novels starring the two of them.

 

much worse than finding that there is nothing to alex at all is finding out that carola dunn is mad about adverbs or, as she would say, she loves adverbs madly and passionately and daily and nightly, too.  as i write, i am opening Die Laughing (Daisy Dalrymple Mysteries, No. 12) randomly and stopping at page 40 where i find: 'agreed grudgingly,' 'said repressively.' on the next page, p. 41, i find: 'said firmly.' gingerly turned ,'said belligerently,' and p. 42 'said irritably.' well, you get the idea.

 

Die Laughing (Daisy Dalrymple Mysteries, No. 12) (a dentist is murdered by laughing gas, hence the title) is published by kensington books and is 270 pages.

 

the thumbs up novel is martin walker's Bruno, Chief of Police (Vintage). it is lovely that two of the most gentle series of detective fiction are written by men, alexander mc call smith and martin walker. walker cares for the dordogne region of france and its people in much the same way smith cares for africa, though his fiction has a harder edge.

 

bruno is the chief of police and the entire police force in the small town of st. denis. he is strong and likeable, respected by men and women, in fact, very well liked by women. although the story luxuriates in the dordogne, in its wine and cheese, atmosphere and village characters, it never crosses the line to tout douceur. an older man, a north african arab is killed with a swastika carved on his chest. his family is well known to bruno and his close friend, the mayor. is this a racist killing? walker goes back to the war-time resistance movement to find the answer. Bruno, Chief of Police (Vintage) is a recommended read.

 

it is published by vintage books and is 273 pages.

anti-communist books, allan dodds frank, charlaine harris grave series

i had an interesting e-mail from c.f. telling of his political development. in his letter he mentions  a book we haven't heard of for a while: he says, "I never was tempted to join the Communist Party... Perhaps reading The God That Failed at Northwestern influenced me, but I cannot remember why I read that book."

  

 it was in the air, chuck. we all read the six essays that made up The God That Failed . they were written by six men who had joined, become disillusioned with, and left the communist party. arthur koestler was one of those men. so we also read his Darkness at Noon: A Novel and orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, Animal Farm: Centennial Edition, and Homage to Catalonia. terrific political books. most of them are still read, though their message seems to have been re-interpreted from anti-communism to anti-totalitarianism. thanks, c.f., for reminding us.

 

another quest related to writing but not to whodunits is my own. i have come across the name allan dodds frank a few times. the last note i saw said that he is president of the overseas press club. my interest in him is personal. i was a friend of and employed by the hall-of-fame journalist mort frank and his wife agnes dodds. mort died a few years ago. the last i heard of agnes, she had re-married (after their divorce) and was living in pittsburgh. could allan be their offspring? anyone who knows or knows how to get in touch with him, please contact me. thanks.

 

the mystery i have to discuss today is charlaine harris's Grave Sight (Harper Connelly Mysteries, Book 1). this is not great literature. it is the first in the 'grave' series starring harper connelly and her creepy half-brother tolliver. i think it is the best in the series. as the novels go on, ms. harris repeats the story of harper's being struck by lightening; thereby having the 'gift' of finding dead people. okay, i guess she has to repeat that, but she also repeats the explanation of the odd relationship between harper and tolliver and off-stage relatives. this is a problem common to all series, but some authors handle it better than ms. harris does. ms. harris, think about making your two main characters more physically and morally attractive. think of making the food they eat on the road more attractive. really, some small towns have decent restaurants.

 

the book is published by berkley prime crime books and is 293 pages.

  

 remember that audrey would appreciate your help in finding a lliterary agent and/or a publisher for the third in her own series of eloquent murders.

audreylavin.com   tr.im/whodunit