2013: On Devouring Authors

Sometimes I find an author whose works are new to me, or return to an author I've read before, at a time when sonething about what they are writing is exactly what I crave. I behave like an addict, reaching out to find all of their books and devouring them until either the craving is gone (or moved on to sonething else) or all the books the author has written - or at least all the books that have the thing I crave about them somewhere - have been read. Last year, two writers of very different historical mysteries affected me in this fashion.

First, Maureen Jennings. I'd read and enjoyed two of her Inspector Murdoch books some time before, but this time I just had to read all the rest on the series (so far, at least - she has other projects that I will be looming into, but I hope she comes back to thisseries again sometime).

I'm not sure exactly why I like these books so much. The Victorian era is not my favourite (except, of course, for the tales of the great consulting detective Sherlock Holmes). Obviously, the character of William Murdoch (different in many ways from the character of the same name in the TV series, which I also adore) is a large part of it. The setting of Toronto, where I live, has something to do with it. And the mysteries themselves, and the subjects they touch on - often issues which are still important and evolving today, such as abortion and pornography - are appealing. For whatever reason, I devoured five novels in a very short space of time and wished there were more.

Poor Tom Is Cold
Let Loose the Dogs
Night's Child
Vices of the Blood
A Journeyman to Grief

The second author to affect me in ths way was Margaret Frazer (actually a pen name for what began as a partnership between two authors, one of whom stopped writing partway through the series while the other continued writing in the same style until her death).

Frazer had written two somewhat interlocked series of historical mysteries set in the midst of the Wars of the Roses. The first featured Dame Frevisse, a nun from a well-to-do background, raised in the household of the son of poet Geoffrey Chaucer, to who she was related by marriage. Intelligent, devout, but a little more independently minded than is ideal in a nun, Frevisse finds herself repeatedly in situations where she must solve murders, sonetimes because they involve people living on lands owned by her priory or the local lord, sometimes because she is drawn into them through the connections to the Chaucer family, and through them, the powerful Bishop Beaufort. Beyond the mysteries, the historical period (one of my favourites) and the delights of a female religious as a protagonist, what I liked about these books was the great attention to detail, to the laws, customs amd politicas of the times.

The Dame Frevisse novels

The Novice's Tale
The Servant's Tale
The Outlaw's Tale
The Bishop's Tale
The Boy's Tale
The Murderer's Tale
The Prioress' Tale
The Maiden's Tale
The Reeve's Tale
The Squire's Tale
The Clerk's Tale
The Bastard's Tale
The Hunter's Tale
The Sempster's Tale
The Traitor's Tale
The Apostate's Tale

Frazer's other series, set in the same tine period and sharing certain characters, features the sonewhat mysterious player Joliffe. A member of a small travelling company, Joliffe and his fellow players are first introduced in one of the Dame Frevisse novels and then go on to a series of their own. Through Frevisse, Joliffe's company makes connections that allow them to gain a patron - an important key to doing more than just surviving - while Joliffe himself becones a courier and spy to a key member of one of the embattled factions in the issue of the legal succession to the throne. Aside from the politics and the mysteries, what I loved about this series was the close and detailed look at the lives and art of players in this time period, how plays were constructed and performed, the interplay of religion, politics and art.

The Joliffe novels

A Play of Isaac
A Play of Dux Moraud
A Play of Knaves
A Play of Lords
A Play of Treachery
A Play of Piety
A Play of Heresy

2013: Assorted Mysteries

Tess Gerritsen, Girl Missing
Kathy Reichs, Bones of the Lost
The Detection Club, The Floating Admiral
Rory Clements, Martyr

I'm never quite certain what is going to make a mystery series interesting to me. Obviously, the protagonist matters quite a bit, the setting and time period matters as well, and I seem to prefer crime-solvers who actually have to make observations and reasoned deductions rather than just race about with a gun until they find a killer. Even knowing that, some characters that you'd think would intrigue me, just don't.

However, two series that do appeal to me - at least in part because the sleuths are female and forensic science is a key part of the equation - are Kathy Reich's Temperence Brennan novels and Tess Gerritsen's Rizzoli and Isles series.

So naturally, I devoured Reich's most recent novel with dispatch and delight. Gerritsen did not have a new nivel out last year, so I thought I'd try one of her medical thriller standalones, Girl Missing. Protagonist was a female medical examiner, so I thought it likely that it would appeal to me, and it did.

I also read and enjoyed a rather unusual detective novel, The Floating Admiral. Wikipedia has this to say about it:

The Floating Admiral is a collaborative detective novel written by fourteen members of the Detection Club in 1931. The twelve chapters of the story were each written by a different author, in the following sequence: Canon Victor Whitechurch, G. D. H. Cole and Margaret Cole, Henry Wade, Agatha Christie, John Rhode, Milward Kennedy, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ronald Knox, Freeman Wills Crofts, Edgar Jepson, Clemence Dane and Anthony Berkeley. G. K. Chesterton contributed a Prologue, which was written after the novel had been completed.

The various authors did not know who their collaborators had tagged as the killer and no loose ends were allowed. These strictures were ably dealt with, producing a consistent and highly readable mystery with both a number of plot twists and a fully satisfying conclusion. Fun read.

Having enjoyed historical mystery series such as the Brother Cadfael mysteries by Edith Pargeter (writing as Ellis Peters) and much more recently the Dame Frevisse and Player Joliffe mysteries by Margaret Frazer, I went in search of other series set in interesting time periods. My first choice was Rory Clements' John Shakespeare novels, set in my beloved Elizabethan England, in which the master playwright has a brother in the service of the Queen's spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham. And It was a good choice. Well-written, with a good sense of the history and politics of the time - including the religious turmoil - and a finely realised protagonist. I will be reading more of the investigations of John Shakespeare.

2013: Historical novels have many flavours

Last year was a year for historical novels of many flavours. I've already discussed the historical mysteries I enjoyed, but there were other multi-genre historical novels to be read kast year.

I finally caught up with Diana Gabaldon's twin historical-tine travel fantasy series, just in time for the upcoming release of the next Outlander novel. I'm looking forward to that, and also, I hope, to more of the Lord John books. 

Diana Gabaldon, Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade
Diana Gabaldon, The Scottish Prisoner
Diana Gabaldon, An Echo in the Bone


Another multi-genre book I happened across was Paula Brackston's now-and-then historical/paranormal fantasy novel The Witch's Daughter. Told in two different times, it's the story of a woman whose mother was hanged as a witch in 1628 and who survives into modern times by learning witchcraft herself from a powerful but vengeful warlock. Brackston seems to have written several more books in a similar vein, and this one was interesting enough that I anticipate reading more of her books.

Then there was the somewhat unclassifiable Jane: The Woman Who Loved Tarzan, by Robin Maxwell, who is known for her historical novels. Jane is a retelling of the Tarzan story from the perspective of the woman who loves and civilises him, but Maxwell makes Jane even more interesting and unconventional than Edgar Rice Burroughs managed to do (and considering his times, and his focus on Tarzan as his hero her actually did rather well at it). A cross between historical fantasy and literary hommage, Jane: The Woman Who Loved Tarzan should delight ERB fans and feminists alike.


And finally, I read two more novels in Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's marvellous historical vampire series. As ever, I enjoyed these novels greatly, both for the historical accuracy and for the chance to experience yet more chapters in the endlessly fascinating life of the Count Saint Germain. 

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, A Dangerous Climate
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Commedia della Morte