All that is Mine I Carry With Me: William Landay

“I think all married men are a little unhappy, secretly, at least the ones who marry young.”

William Landay’s All That is Mine I Carry With Me begins with author Phil Solomon stymied when it comes to the subject of his next book until childhood friend, Jeff contacts him and suggests a topic: in 1975, Jeff’s mother, Jane Larkin vanished without a trace. Her husband Dan, a prominent attorney, was the prime suspect, but he was never charged with the crime. Phil decides to write the book and interviews many of those involved in the case including: Jane’s three children, Alex, Miranda and Jeff, the lead detective on the case, Glover, who is convinced that Dan is guilty, and Jane’s sister, Kate.

The novel is divided into 4 sections “books,” and the story unfolds over decades through various points of view. The main gist of the book is the permanent impact the crime/disappearance left on the children who are raised by the man who may or may not be their mother’s killer. The Larkins seemed like a storybook family, but under the shiny, wholesome surface, there are hints of trouble.

The story is somewhat uneven. The section concerning Miranda, Jane’s daughter, the youngest child, the first one home from school to find her mother absent, is particularly strong and moving. This is a little girl who grows up without her mother and in a sense without her father too–since she suspects he is responsible for her mother’s disappearance. Her life is tainted not just by the absence and disappearance of her mother, plus the question whether or not her mum is even alive, but also her life is also stained by the fact that her father is a suspect. Miranda, Glover, Jeff and Kate may live their lives but they will always partly be “stuck in time, looking for [Jane] while the rest of the world moved on.” Dan certainly moves forward with his life in spite of the BIG QUESTION about his missing wife hanging over his head. He isn’t a nice man. At all. Here he is on the subject of marriage:

“I’m just being honest here. The men I know–Okay, think of it like this: a young man is like a rising stock, like IBM or Coke. And the stock gets sold too soon, while it’s still going up. So what happens? The guy looks around, eight, ten, fifteen years later, and what does he say? He says, ‘I sold too low. I should have held out. I’m worth more than I got’ ”

Kate: “the woman, in your little metaphor, she’s a sinking stock. She’s worth less, eight or ten years in.”

“No, well–what she’s worth–well, yes. But look, this isn’t just me talking, this is society, this is what we’re taught. And let’s be honest, if we’re looking at men and women as a marketplace, as assets, in pure economic terms, then yes, our society assigns a higher value to a young sexy woman than to a middle-aged woman. […] A woman is sold closer to her peak value than a man. Before she begins to depreciate.“

For this reader, the characters are the book’s strongest point. Jane, Kate, Dan, Miranda, Glover were well developed, incredibly believable characters–so much so that this reads like a true-crime book. The weakness for me is in the novel’s structure. The beginning half of the book was very strong, and I couldn’t stop reading. But then the plot lost momentum. I notice other reviewers feel the opposite–many preferred the second half of the book. In spite of my quibble regarding the book’s structure, I am still thinking about it. …

I just finished watching the TV series Defending Jacob based on the book by this author, and I have a feeling that we will see this book on the screen too.

Review copy

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Reef Road: Deborah Goodrich Royce

“It was easy to cross the next barrier in an ever-collapsing string of them.”

Deborah Goodrich Royce’s novel, Reef Road, begins in 2020 with the discovery of a severed human hand that washes up in Palm Beach Florida. From that point, the novel splits into two storylines: one is told by “the wife” Linda Alonso and “the writer” Noelle. Middle-aged Noelle lives a lonely life in Florida and her life is overshadowed (stained) by the 1948 unsolved brutal murder of an eight-year-old girl (also called Noelle). Noelle, the writer’s mother, was permanently damaged by the brutal murder of her friend, and that damage ricocheted to her daughter, Noelle, subsequently named after the murder. So here are these two women: Linda and Noelle. How are they connected?

Linda Alonso lives in an upscale neighborhood with her Argentinean husband, Miguel, and two small children. We know almost immediately that Linda is unhappy in her marriage, and Miguel, as portrayed, is a controlling perfectionist–the sort or person who makes you grit your teeth as you wait for the criticism to fall. At first, Noelle seems just interested in Linda, but over the course of the book, it becomes obvious that this interest is a full-blown obsession.

These two women connect over crime–past and present–when Miguel and the two children disappear. Miguel’s car is found at Miami International airport, and there is evidence that he absconded with the children to Argentina. The lockdown has just began, and with flight restrictions due to COVID, Linda cannot travel to search for her children.

While the idea of this slow-burn novel is intriguing, the two stories which connect in inventive and intriguing ways feel strangely apart. This may be due to the long sections from Noelle regarding the details of the 1948 murder, which was, by the way, based on the very real murder of the author’s mother’s friend. It may be due to some essential information withheld from the plot. With the double use of the name Noelle, there were unclear moments. I liked how the author used COVID in the plot, and I liked the way these two storylines finally collided. The vicious murder of Noelle left scars in the lives of those connected to the crime, and the author cleverly conveys that sense of damage.

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The Next Time I Die: Jason Starr

“This version of me has made some bad decisions.”

Author Jason Starr marks a change of pace with his new novel, Next Time I Die. Starr has an impressive number of crime novels under his belt, with everyday ordinary protagonists who are caught in a web of criminality and claustrophobic deceit. In this novel, lawyer Steven Blitz is preparing for the upcoming murder trial of Jeffrey Hammond. Hammond, an artist, is accused of murdering three men, and Blitz has constructed an insanity defense. As he chews over his statement, his wife, Laura, a sometimes violent manic-depressive now off her meds, announces she wants a divorce. Laura tells Steven to leave and he drives, in heavy snow, to his brother’s home.

Stopping at a gas station, Steven encounters a man and a young woman engaged in a possible domestic dispute. Steven intervenes, the man stabs Steven in the stomach, stuffs the girl in the car, and drives off leaving Steven bleeding heavily. As he passes out, he hears a voice, “I saw you, Steven Blitz.”

Steven wakes up in a hospital, but something is horribly wrong. His wife, Laura, a viper at the best of times, is loving, sweet and concerned, and Steven suddenly has a daughter. Disoriented, Steven tries to latch onto the world he knew before he was stabbed, but he soon learns that the world he is in has no coronavirus, 9/11 didn’t take place, major political figures don’t exist, and while Steven’s brother Brian visits, Brian’s life is totally different. Of course, by this time, an alternate reality seems the only possible explanation. Hospital staff chalk up Steven’s behaviour as the after effects of concussion.

When Steven is released and returns to his life, the new version that is, he finds that Hammond, the psycho he was representing is not accused of murder, and Steven decides that Hammond has not yet been caught. Steven notes, “the idea of a free Jeffery Hammond terrifies me,” and he starts digging into Hammond’s life. When Steven starts getting anonymous threatening texts, Steven’s paranoia ramps up to fever pitch. Gradually as Steven sinks into his new life, he realises that he’s not one of the good guys, but surely he can’t be as bad as that sociopath, Hammond, right? You know, the sociopath who chops up his victims.

As always with any Jason Starr book, The Next Time I Die is a page-turner. The author’s strength lies in his ability to create relatable characters who seem to be bludgeoned by the sort of everyday problems most of us have. Starr seems to like to create these connections between reader and protagonist but then just as we relate, it’s off down the rabbit hole. …

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Ocean State: Stewart O’Nan

Stewart O’Nan’s Ocean State is the story of a murder, the sort of ugly thing that makes the headlines: Angel and Birdy, two teenage girls in Rhode Island, are involved with the same boy: Myles. Angel and Myles have been an item for a while, but Myles strays with Birdy which leads to a tragic outcome. Framing the murder are the lives of Angel’s sister, 13-year-old Marie and her single mother, Carol. Carol has a bad history with men, and her two daughters, Angel and Marie have long identified relationship patterns that remain oblivious to Carol.

Carol and her daughters lead a tenuous poverty-stricken existence in an Ashaway, Rhode Island duplex, and according to Marie:

My mother’s talent was finding new boyfriends and new places for us to live.

Ashaway is a small community, and everyone seems to know everyone else. Birdy lives in Hopkinton, and both girls come from a working-class, hardscrabble family. Myles, however, comes from an affluent family, and college is in his future. There’s the implication that Birdy and Angel compete for Myles partly because of his status. He represents all they will never have. Carol’s life of a succession of loser men may have contributed to the murder of Birdy–perhaps Carol’s failures reinforce Angel’s violent need to kill her rival. Marie’s first person narrative reveals a great deal about the impermanence of her mother’s relationships:

My mother’s boyfriends tried to be sweet, but they were strangers. Sometimes they paid our rent and sometimes we split it. When they broke up with my mother–suddenly, drunkenly, their shouting jerking us from sleep–we would have to move again. Like her, we were always rooting for things to work out, far beyond where we should have. Our father was gone, and our mother couldn’t stop wanting to be in love. “I swear this is the last time,” she’d say, dead sober, and a month later she’d bring home another loser. They seemed to be getting younger and scruffier, which Angel thought was a bad sign.

The novel passes between first person and third person narrative. Myles, a central figure, remains a murky character, and it’s unclear why he participated in the murder. Even though we know on the first page that a murder has occurred and that Angel “helped kill another girl,” the story is slow to start. About 3/4 of this sad, depressing book is the lead-up to the crime and then the rest is the fallout. In spite of the serious topic, with characters set on a collision path that will end in murder, the story is not compelling, and it’s unclear what point the novel is trying to make. Interestingly, Marie, who seems to be the most sensitive one here, is the one most damaged by the crime. This was a senseless crime, and that senselessness stains the novel too.

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The Blunderer: Patricia Highsmith

“He felt he was sliding down a sewer.”

In Patricia Highsmith’s psychological novel The Blunderer, two very different married men are connected by murder. The book opens with a violent murder committed by bookshop owner, Kimmel. He follows his wife who is travelling on a bus, and then when the bus stops, he lures her into a remote area with the pretense of talking. He bludgeons and stabs her to death. Walter Stackhouse, a lawyer who is miserable in his marriage to volatile, mentally ill Clara, sees an article about the murder. Since the murdered woman’s husband, Kimmel, has an alibi, and there are no leads, the case is not solved. Walter is interested in the case; he cuts out the article from the paper, and hypothesizing that Kimmel was the murderer, he foolishly visits Kimmel’s grubby bookshop, and mentions the murder. Kimmel imagines that Walter is just another nosy person come to gawk. Things should end there, but since Walter orders a book, Kimmel has Walter’s name and address.

A few scenes illustrate the miserable state of Walter’s marriage. Walter tries hard to please Clara, but she’s mentally ill and is becoming increasingly unstable and demanding. Clara has alienated all of Walter’s friends, and several social gatherings end leaving Walter embarrassed by his wife’s nastiness. We see the Stackhouses’ toxic marriage when they are on a week’s holiday with their unneutered fox terrier, Jeff. At the Lobster Pot, Clara orders her favourite dish: cold lobster with mayonnaise. Walter orders broiled fish:

“I thought you’d have meat tonight, Walter. If you have fish again, Jeff gets nothing today.“

“Alright,” Walter said. “I’ll order a steak. Jeff can have most of it.“

“You say it in such a martyred tone!”

The steaks were not very good at the Lobster Pot. Walter had ordered steak the other night because of Jeff. Jeff refused to eat fish. “It’s perfectly okay with me, Clara, let’s not argue about anything our last night.”

“Who’s arguing? You’re trying to start something.”

But after all the steak had been ordered. Clara had had her way, and she sighed and looked off into space, apparently thinking of something else.

At this point, Clara lets unneutered fox terrier off leash and he proceeds to hump people in the restaurant. She’s asked repeatedly by the waiter to curb her dog, and Walter is the one who feels embarrassed and eventually stops the dog–not Clara. The implicit idea here is that there’s a pecking order at the Stackhouse home, and Walter comes after the dog.

Clara’s controlling, manipulative behaviour becomes more hostile and bizarre, and the Stackhouse’s marriage spins out-of-control. Finally, Walter can’t take any more and he asks for a divorce. Clara’s answer is to try suicide; she’s threatened it before. Walter feels horribly guilty after Clara’s suicide attempt and is ready to try to keep the marriage afloat, but her behaviour slides immediately. This time she accuses Walter of having an affair with Ellie, a young woman who attended a party at the Stackhouse residence. Walter storms out, seeks out Ellie, and so an affair begins. Once again Walter tells Clara he wants a divorce. Clara leaves on a bus trip, ostensibly to see her dying mother–a woman she hates. Walter follows the bus–all the time in the back of his head is the idea that he will lure Clara into a remote area near the bus stop, kill her. But something goes wrong. Walter follows the bus with murderous fantasies, but his wife is not at the bus stop. The next day, Clara is found dead at the base of a cliff near the bus stop. She’s an apparent suicide

Enter another major player in the game of cat and mouse, sadistic detective, Corby. He fixates on the connections between the Kimmel murder and the death of Clara Stackhouse. Corby is convinced that there’s a connection between the two widowers, and he begins reinvestigating the Kimmel murder. Corby’s relentless pursuit of Kimmel and Stackhouse brings all three men to breaking point.

Strangers on a Train is a brilliant book about 2 men who meet, by accident on a train, and they have an exchange regarding murder. There’s a similar theme at work here–two men, unhappily married, connected by murder. Walter Stackhouse is an interesting character–a man who contemplates murder and who feels guilty because he thinks about it. He had an opportunity to be free when Clara tried to commit suicide, but he is the one who saved her. Highsmith shows us that there’s a world between thinking about murder and actually committing the deed. Walter does not have what it takes in spite of intense provocation. Kimmel, however, is pure evil.

While the story is gripping, it’s the psychological undercurrents that make this a powerful book. Walter is the blunderer, making one horrible mistake after another. Under scrutiny following his wife’s death, his life unravels. He’s a difficult, complex character–his wife suggests he’s having an affair with Ellie, and he has one. He reads a story about a murdered woman and hypothesizes that her husband is the murderer. The story places the idea to do the same thing in Walter’s mind. There’s more than an edge of masochism and weakness to Walter’s behaviour. Finally Walter has terrible taste in women. To sadistic, mentally abusive Clara, he’s a doormat, and there’s the sense that any relationship with Ellie could go in the same direction. And what’s with Ellie, hanging around sniffing after Walter while his wife is in hospital? There’s one time sex with Ellie, and she says she’s ‘not that kind of girl’ and demands he get a divorce, pronto. Of course, he doesn’t know what normal is, so he was unwise to step from one toxic relationship into another. While sex doesn’t enter the book much, there are masochistic tendencies, a sadist in charge of the case and the impotent Kimmel’s lucrative sideline, so sexual undercurrents are very much at play here. Even with the dog.

(There’s a film version of this–not nearly as good as the book.)

The Glass Heart: Marty Holland (1946)

“Women always take one look at me and go back to their husbands.”

Marty Holland (1919-1971) doesn’t seem to be remembered these days. There’s very little about her on Wikipedia. Her first novel, Fallen Angel, was adapted for the screen and starred Dana Andrews and Linda Darnell. The File on Thelma Jordan was based on one of Holland’s unpublished stories. The Glass Heart is a grimy, hard-boiled tale of lust, murder and blackmail (sign me up, baby) but unfortunately, the dark, hard centre of this novel slides into conformity, tinged with sentimentality, towards the end.

Curt Blair, an unemployed petty thief, hangs out in restaurants and makes a marginal, opportunistic living.

It was one of those ritzy has joints in Beverly Hills, away from the hoi polloi. Fancy lace tablecloths, demi-tases, and waitresses in pink organdy outfits. One of those places. I was sitting up at the counter, sipping coffee, puffing on a cigarette, soaking in the warmth of the room, and glancing now and then through the draped window at the rain outside. It was raining like hell. No ordinary downpour: heavy, splotchy drops–the way it rains in California.

Curt steals a customer’s expensive camel hair coat, but he’s spotted and chased. He runs into a gated garden, hoping to hide, but the owner thinks he’s her new handyman. Curt decides to stay, in spite of the nastiness of the bossy owner, Virginia Block. She lists all the work she expects him to do–he’ll live at the house and be responsible for the general upkeep of the house, car repair, gardening etc, and all for twenty dollars a week. Curt considers telling her to shove it–especially when he sees his tiny, filthy room, but when he thinks of the police, he decides it wouldn’t be a bad idea to lay low for a few days.

That was the plan, but Curt didn’t factor in Virginia who calls herself a “defenseless old woman,” and “a woman alone,” but in reality, she’s a penny-pinching, shrewd slave-driver. Crafty Virginia owes money all over town, and one of Curt’s many jobs is to lie to bill collectors. When Curt finds out that Virginia’s husband disappeared, he’s not surprised. Curt rationalises that the absent husband probably couldn’t take the heat any longer and escaped. Curt should move on, but he sniffs that the old lady has money and that if he plays the game, he could be living on easy street. The old lady, by the way is fifty. Curt starts laying on the compliments and Virginia gets skittish with the flattery. Enter a female lodger, a would-be actress, Lynn Cook, and all of Curt’s intentions to smooch Virginia are thrown out of the window.

What was it about the dame that sent my fever up? Chemistry? Or whatever you call it. This one really had it, whatever it was.

Another female lodger, Elsie, moves in. Soon Curt is blackmailing Virginia concerning the whereabouts of her missing husband, and then passing on the proceeds to both of the female lodgers. Curt admits “I’ve always been a sucker that way. I can’t say no to a pretty dame!” This toxic situation can’t last forever, and Curt is playing with fire.

Written with great snappy dialogue, the plot oozes noir. Curt’s involvement with three women is a perfect scenario for noir, but the plot backs off from the darkest descent. There’s a light touch in Curt’s relationships and his marshmallow attitude towards young attractive women. Ultimately the book’s hard edge disappears almost as if the author was reluctant to take the plot to its logical, dark consequences. Still, I’m glad I read this. Virginia is a great (nasty) character.

The Way We Die Now: Charles Willeford (1988)

“That’s my life’s ambition, to grow old and be a burden on someone.”

In The Way We Die Now, Hoke Moseley is back for the fourth and final (sob) novel. This is a phenomenal, hard-boiled crime series from Charles Willeford, and The Way We Die Now is the darkest, most violent and bleakest of the novels. Hoke’s world vision hasn’t improved with the years spent with Miami homicide. His career has spanned some incredible changes in Miami: gentrification of Miami neighbourhoods, inflation and the influx of Cuban refugees. But the changes have also been personal for Hoke: first a female partner, Alita Sanchez in the second novel, New Hope for the Dead. Then his ex-wife departs for California with her new husband and dumps Hoke’s two daughters on his doorstep. Professionally, affirmative action begins in the workplace and Hoke rolls with all the changes, but the hardest of all … laws about cigarette smoking.

The Way We Die Now finds Hoke still working cold cases. When the book opens, he’s chewing over the cold-case murder of a doctor. 3 years ago, the doctor’s garage door opener was stolen, and about a week after that, the doctor was shot as he exited his car. The murder seemed like a professional hit, and the case quickly grew cold. But the doctor’s widow married one of her husband’s partners, and that, to Hoke, seems to point towards motive. On the personal front, Hoke is still living with Alita Sanchez, her baby son, and his two daughters. Trouble arrives in the form of a convicted murderer who, thanks to a technicality, has been released after serving just a fraction of his sentence. The man, Donald Dutton, who was accused, tried and convicted of murdering his brother, swore to get even with Hoke, the homicide detective on the case. In the time that has passed since Donald’s conviction, Hoke hasn’t aged well. He’s lost most of his hair, all his teeth, and he has a paunch. Donald, on the other hand, is dashing and loaded. When Donald moves in across the street from Hoke, you know that revenge is brewing.

As with all Willeford novels, nothing is ever predictable, so what happens with Donald blindsides Hoke. Plus he’s too busy working homicide and going undercover as a favour to Major Brownley investigating missing Haitians who worked picking melons in a remote area. The novel begins with horrific violence which is then connected later to Hoke’s explosive undercover gig. Hoke discovers the hard way what happens when you are dropped in rural Florida with just a few dollars, tatty clothes, no gun and no teeth. As for what happens to Hoke, think those banjoes in Deliverance and you’d just about have it. Mention is made earlier in the tale about burglars who break into empty homes that are tented for termites and then drop like the cockroaches thanks to the poisonous fumes. This tidbit of valuable information seems random, but again it ties into Hoke’s undercover gig later.

In the earlier novels, Hoke had an anemic sex life, and at one point in The Way We Die Now, he’s offered a hand-job by a trailer park hooker. He turns down her offer. His reply: “If I wanted a hand job, I could do it myself. Women don’t do know how to do it right anyway” And somehow this mirrors Hoke’s narrow, meagre sex life which has declined and become increasingly difficult as the series continues. Hoke is an incredible creation: overweight, balding, no teeth and as we would say these days, a fashion victim, but he’s an excellent detective.

The humour in this dark, gritty novel comes partly from Hoke’s conviction that anti-smoking laws and fines in the workplace will never work. But since Charles Willeford died in 1988, at age 69, the year this novel was published, the anti smoking rifts were not meant to be funny. This is only in hindsight. But there’s other humour: Willeford twisted humour: I’ll call them Hokeisms: from yuppies, parenting, voting, marriage, and women. Also there’s the continuing saga of Hoke’s false teeth which he must part with due to his undercover gig. The trailer park hooker keeps a small coke-drinking handicapped child stuffed in a box in a cupboard inside her trailer. At one point, Hoke calls in a favour to have the child removed. Thank god, you think as a reader. But then Hoke follows the request with his opinion that the child is ruining his mother’s life. That’s a Hokeism for you. The World According to Hoke. … There are some loose ends in the novel, and yet there’s also the sense of an ending. Sadly this is the last we see of Hoke and his bleak outlook on life.

The Family Plot: Megan Collins

In The Family Plot by Megan Collins “Our family was unnatural,” a phrase spoken by Andy, one of the four Lighthouse siblings, is a vast understatement. The Lighthouse children, Charlie, Dahlia (our narrator), Andy and Tate, are all named after murder victims, so it’s obvious from page one that all the members of the Lighthouse family are obsessed with the subject of murder. But perhaps that makes sense as their mother’s parents were brutally murdered during a home invasion in Connecticut at the family estate. Following the murder, she moved to Blackburn island, to their summer home, a “drafty, secluded mansion,” where their father, Daniel, “indulged her eccentricities, and did not protest as she turned the mansion into something of a mausoleum.” A mausoleum for murder victims. Add to that the fact that the Lighthouse children are homeschooled, and … the main focus of the curriculum … you guessed it … is murder. Making those murder dioramas must have been so much fun. Let’s pile on that the disturbing fact Blackburn Island has a serial killer of its own, and the killer has never been caught. The Lighthouse home is nicknamed the Murder Mansion by the locals and the family members are considered weird. No wonder these kids are screwed up.

When the novel opens, the children, now adults, understandably are scattered, (I’d have changed my name,) and Dahlia returns to the island after an absence of 7 years. She has returned only because her father died, and this reunion isn’t going to be any fun. Tate is an artist, Charlie is an actor, Dahlia is the narrator, and Andy… well he went missing at age 16, and it was assumed that he ran away (not that anyone could blame him). The loyal family employee, Fritz, is busy digging a grave for Dad (yes, he’s being buried on the island) when he discovers a body in the plot that was saved for dear old dad. As to what happened to missing brother Andy, well the mystery is solved. He’s been lying 6 feet under in the back garden all this time. But who killed him?

The premise of the book sounded interesting with its underlying theme that those touched by murder are never the same, and the internet is full of stories about people who become obsessed with murders and then go off the rails in various interesting ways. But for this reader, the entire setup was hard to swallow. There’s suspension of disbelief and then there’s just plain cuckoo. I stopped many times, put the book down and asked myself whether or not these damaged people, raised in this toxic environment would have kept acting like idiots? It’s understandable that mummy is a nutjob: her parents were murdered and then her whole life became murder, but even with that in mind, I couldn’t accept the plot. Wouldn’t you at least wonder what the hell happened to your twin brother, a teen who was clearly unhappy at home? Wouldn’t you ask yourself why you never heard from him again, and why your parents moan a bit but then quickly move on? The family members are all freaky weird but in the first pages after finding Andy’s body in the grave, there they are all in the kitchen eating cookies. No one is saying WTF, packing their bags and hightailing it off that miserable island.

With many books, willing suspension of disbelief is engaged, albeit this tacit agreement by the reader may be fragile, or challenged, but in The Family Plot the willing suspension of disbelief must be resuscitated repeatedly. I found it impossible to accept the behavior of the characters, so if you are about to embark on this book, be prepared to toss your disbelief out the window and then watch it bounce back. I just went with the plot and then I found myself saying things such as “what sickos,” or “as if,” “oh come off it” and even “wtf.” That said, it’s an easy, quick read that keeps you barreling along to the last page. Some readers loved the book, so perhaps I’m in the minority here.

Review copy.

Lady in the Lake: Laura Lippman

Once again set in Baltimore, Laura Lippman’s Lady in the Lake is a crime novel inspired by the 1969 death of Shirley Parker, a woman who worked at Baltimore’s Sphinx Club. Turning to fiction, the Lady in the Lake is Cleo, a black woman with a chequered past, who is initially a missing person until she turns up dead in a fountain in Druid Hill Park.

At the heart of the story is Maddie Schwartz, a well-to-do married woman in her 30s who leaves her husband, Milton, son, Seth, and affluent lifestyle to start a new life. There’s nothing really wrong with the marriage, but Maddie feels “as if she had been living in one of those shoebox dioramas” children build. It’s a ‘perfect’ life in many ways; it’s certainly the type of life that’s expected of her, but Maddie wants more. After leaving Milton and her comfortable life, Maddie receives a small allowance from her husband, sets up in a grotty flat, and she quickly discovers that “post-Milton life was smaller, shabbier.” She tries to sell a ring to raise cash, and this act leads to her illicit relationship with black patrol cop, Ferdie.

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When Maddie finds a murdered child during a search, she capitalizes on her social skills and inside knowledge of the case in order to get a start in journalism. Having gained some exclusive information (bedroom talk) she trades this for a minor job assisting the Helpline columnist of the Baltimore Star, a man named Don Heath. Once in this job, Maddie becomes involved in the Cleo Sherwood case, and ambition drives Maddie onward.

The story is told through a host of characters. With any crime, stories narrow down to victim and perpetrator. We tend to forget that many lives are irrevocably altered by a murder. Sweeping in all the people impacted by Cleo’s death (as well as sundry others) Lippman captures the sensation of the ripples from Cleo’s death. However, while some voices added a great deal to the story, others seemed superfluous. I liked seeing Maddie through the eyes of other characters, and while I was never quite convinced by Maddie’s drive to leave her cocooned life with Milton, other characters’ impressions of Maddie helped fill out her character. Maddie is a privileged woman whose social position opens doors, and she seems to be a bit on the powder puff side, yet the stunt she pulls with her ring reveals a hard side, and it’s clear that Maddie is going to have a career, a good career as she’s extremely ambitious. Maddie’s ambition is nicely contrasted against many other characters whose lives are sad and disappointing. There’s reporter Bob Bauer who compares his private life to a Baltimore version of Ricky Ricardo and Lucille Ball, yet Bauer’s wife is severely incapacitated by MS. Then there’s Don Heath who knows that he cannot outrun dementia.

I don’t think anyone lives long enough to imagine his next decade accurately. You get to thirty and you think you know what forty will be like, but you don’t, then comes fifty and boy does forty look good. I’m fifty-eight now and I’m not going to pretend I have a clue what my seventh decade will be, other than disappointing. Because every decade so far has been less than I hoped; why should the next one be different?

Not Lippman’s best; the story is too fragmented for that, but Lady in the Lake breathes life into the Baltimore world of the 60s, rife with racism and sexism.

Sideswipe: Charles Willeford (1987)

“Being without a wife gave a man a whole different way of looking at the world. And it looked even better now that he had a car to drive again. If it came to a toss-up, car or wife, most men, or at least the ones Stanley had known in Detroit, would certainly give up their wives.”

Sideswipe, Charles Willeford’s third Hoke Moseley novel, finds the Miami homicide detective under incredible strain, personally and professionally, and he decides to quit the force. While Hoke’s pals on the force, his very pregnant partner, Sanchez, and Bill Henderson, cover for Hoke and file for medical leave, Hoke decides he wants a simpler life. Yeah, right. He accepts a job managing his father’s apartment complex in Riviera Beach, and while Hoke initially imagines he’ll be on the beach and little troubled by tenants, the job soon turns into one annoying interruption after another.

But Hoke’s life is in the background, and in the foreground is a violent crime, still in the embryonic stages. …

Retired Michigan auto worker Stan and his wife Betsey moved to Florida a few years earlier. Betsey isn’t thrilled with the move and wants to be back in Michigan. There’s not exactly war afoot between them, but Betsey doesn’t like Stan under her feet all day, and the two of them lead separate lives. A terrible misunderstanding involving a neighbourhood child leads to Stan spending the night in jail, and here he meets a glib, smooth-talking career criminal, Troy Louden. Troy gives Stan a few tips, and in exchange, Stan promises to do a ‘favour’ for Louden. When Betsey departs for Michigan, Stan, feeling alone and betrayed by his wife and family, allows Troy to stay. One favour leads to another until Stan becomes an accomplice in a vicious armed robbery. Willeford’s brilliantly conceived creation of the psychopath, Troy Louden, adds a layer of dark humour. Troy is vicious, sick, and twisted–a shitshow about to happen. Using a handful of characters, Willeford shows us how Troy successfully dominates his pathetic criminal crew–a painter, a stripper and finally Stan. Troy Louden isn’t educated, and arguably isn’t that intelligent, but he possesses the psychopath’s understanding of how to manipulate:

I’m a professional criminal, what the shrinks call a criminal psychopath. What it means is, I know the difference between right and wrong and all that, but I don’t give a shit. That’s the official version. Most men in prison are psychopaths like me, and there are times when we don’t give a shit when we act impulsively. Ordinarily, I’m not impulsive because I always think a job out very carefully before I get around to doing it.

While the artist and disfigured stripper (wonder how that happened??) recruited by Troy comply with his demands out of fear, Troy seduces Stan into criminal activity:

“I’m a criminal psychopath so I’m not responsible for the things I do.“

“Does that mean you’re crazy? You don’t look crazy, Troy–I mean John.”

“Robert.”

“Robert. Of course, pulling that pistol on that man–“

“Let me finish, Pop. I don’t have time to into all the ramifications of my personality, it’s too complex. I’ve been tested again and again, and it always comes out the same: Psychopath. And because I’m a criminal, I’m also a criminal psychopath. You follow me?

“Yeah I think so, but if you aren’t crazy, what are you?”

“It’s what I told you already. I know the difference between good and bad, but it makes no difference to me. If I see the right thing to do and want to do it, I do it. If I see the wrong thing and want to do it, I do that, too.“

“You mean you can’t help yourself then?”

“Certainly I can. I’ll put it another way. I can help myself, but I don’t give a damn.”

“And because you don’t give a damn, you’re a criminal psychopath, is that it?”

“You’ve got it.“

“But why?”–Stanley made a sweeping movement with his arm–“don’t you give a damn?”

“Because I’m a criminal pyschopath. Maybe when they give you some tests, you might could be one too.“

Sideswipe is a marvellous entry in the Hoke Moseley saga. One of my favourite literary (or film) themes is how someone can lead a perfectly respectable life, never taking a step wrong, but then fate intervenes and suddenly that person, that life, is derailed. And it’s at that point, things always get interesting…. So derailment or sideswipe. … Stan’s moral seduction by Troy Louden is a perfect example of how one staid, retired, older man, once pried loose from his respectable life, spirals into an unfamiliar world. We follow Stan’s increasing, initially naïve involvement with Louden and also Hoke’s attempts to live a civilian life away from Miami Homicide. The violence, when it comes, is explosive and shocking. As I read this, there was one point when I asked myself if I found Stan’s actions credible. My initial response was ‘no,’ but Willeford had very carefully seeded a quirk in Stan’s behaviour which gives a glimpse at a pathological aspect of Stan’s personality. On the surface, we have this highly responsible citizen, an older man who has never put one foot wrong in his life, and yet he meets a career criminal and is so seduced by this man’s rhetoric that he abandons his way of life and goes to the dark side. So in the final assessment, yes, I could accept Stan’s choices and bad judgment–given his wife and son’s rejection, and that nasty quirk.