whimsyful

The Family Vault
A “cozy” mystery that is the first in a series, The Family Vault follows Sarah Kelling, the rather sheltered young member of the sprawling, wealthy and eccentric Kellings clan in Boston. Orphaned and married at a young age to a handsome older cousin and living in the same house as her blind and deaf mother-in-law, Sarah has been simultaneously stifled and unnoticed for years. Things change when one of Sarah’s great-uncles die , and as a part of his will demands to be interred in the ancient family tomb at Boston Common. But when they open the old vault’s door, no one expected to find a newly laid brick wall behind it—or the decade old corpse of a stripper with rubies in its teeth behind that.

Charlotte MacLeod has been referred to as the American Agatha Christie, which first piqued my interest in her. This is the first book I’ve read of hers, and so far I’m quite pleased. She has nice prose (with some varied vocabulary), good characterization, and comes up with some pretty interesting plots for her mysteries.

Part of what made this stand out to me is that Sarah is a great protagonist, who gets a nice character arc. She starts off as naive and sheltered, but quickly decides to jump into investigating, and perseveres even after learning some painful truths and taking some very hard knocks. For a supposedly cozy mystery, she goes through a surprising amount of character development as her whole world gets turned upside down several times, forcing her to discover an unexpected bedrock of practicality and grit.

As for the plot, I was a little flabbergastered at the plot structure of this book. A bit after the initial setup, Sarah finds out in succession that:

spoilers for the first half of the book

1) the skeleton in the vault belongs to the burlesque dancer Ruby Red who used to hang around her now husband Alexander back when he was young and single, before her mysterious disappearance one day
2) the brick wall blocking the vault was laid in a unique pattern that only Alexander and his mother knows
3) Alexander has been acting extremely strangely since the discovery of the body

Now, usually one would expect Sarah to start suspecting her husband of Ruby Red’s murder, and a mound of circumstancial evidence to pile up before the true culprit is revealed at the climax. But here Sarah quickly confronts Alexander, who confesses that:

1) he and his mother did dump the body in the vault, but
2) he did not kill Ruby, however, he believes his mother did because
3) he witnessed her arranging the death of his rich father in a boating accident, the same one that cost her her hearing and sight and
4) she also orphaned Sarah by murdering her father, so that Alexander and by extension herself would have access to Sarah’s inheritance.

And this is all around halfway through the book!

Needless to say, a lot of other stuff happens. I did manage to guess the true villain/mastermind behind it all, mainly by genre saviness and paying attention to which characters the narrative was focusing on. It got a trifle ridiculous how extensive the villain’s network and plans were—more suitable to a thriller than a supposed cozy mystery, but I can’t say it was boring. I read this on an otherwise long and miserable flight, but this kept me engrossed throughout.

Rest You Merry

The first book in another cozy mystery series starring Peter Shandy, a somewhat cumerdgeony but brilliant tenured professor of agrology at the fictional Balaclava Agricultural College in Massachusetts. After years of staunchly holding out against his neighbors’—in particular one Jemima Ames’—urgings to properly decorate his house for Christmas as part of the college’s annual Grand Illumination celebration (and major fundraiser), a fed up Shandy cracks and decides to decorate his house in as overbearing and vulgar manner as possible as a prank, and then leaves town for a sea cruise for Christmas to avoid the expected outrage. When he returns, it’s to find Jemima dead on his living room floor. While everyone else views her death as an accident, Peter immediately realizes that something doesn’t add up.

This was quite enjoyable! The plotting is tight, the writing is skilled and both the cast and setting are charming enough that I would read about the ongoing hijinks at Balaclava College even when they don’t involve murder. My only nitpicks is the minor subplot/running joke of Peter suddenly becoming extremely desirable to the local female population after he pretends to have been away for a romantic rendezvous (when he was in fact on a cruise by himself) did not land at all, but at least he found it as incomprehensible and unsettling as I did?

King Devil

A YA historical mystery/thriller set in 1910’s New England, King Devil follows plain, penniless Lavinia Tabard, who at twenty has just graduated from a boarding school for proper young ladies and, having nowhere else to go, is collected as a charity case by her wealthy older cousin Zilpha and taken to Zilpha’s new summer cottage in the country. Feeling trapped and stifled as an unwanted third wheel in the cottage between spoiled, saccharine Zilpha and her longtime devoted “companion” Tetsy, Lavinia is desperate to find an escape, but without any money, job prospects or beauty her future looks grim. But when Lavinia makes a strange discovery while making grave rubbings at the local cementery, she becomes drawn into a strange and awkward situation involving two young architects—handsome but weak-willed Roland and fiery redhead Hayward—and their boss Jenks who has been missing for years, and it soon becomes clear that someone is willing to kill to conceal the truth.

I found this a very solid old school YA, with a few caveats. I wouldn’t call this a fair play mystery, more a suspense/mystery thriller. Lavinia was a great heroine, who was put into a very uncomfortable situation with little power, but is very curious and resourceful. I also liked her slowly developing relationship with Hayward, and how despite his grumpiness she sees his kindness and worth, despite everyone else thinking she would prefer the handsome but shallow Roland—it’s refreshing in this genre to have a romance where both parties are solidly ordinary in terms of looks. The New England countryside settings was also really well drawn, especially the portrayal of the class differences between Zilpha’s household and the rest of the town, with Lavinia hovering in an uneasy in-between state.

Lastly, I was pleasantly surprised at first that this was a YA published in the 1970s that frankly acknowledged that lesbians exist, with Lavinia comparing Zilpha and Tetsy to couples she knew at her female boarding school. Unfortunately, this did turn out to be a case of

major ending spoilers

Evil Lesbians, where the big reveal at the end is that Zilpha killed Jenks and Tetsy helped her cover it up (and it’s implied she committed another murder to do so). Granted, I did find it to be well written and characterized—Zilpha in particular as a solipsistic, spoiled woman who’s had everything she ever wanted handed to her on a silver plate due to her money and class and thus cannot stand being told no, and Tetsy as her fanatically loyal enabler. The ending is also unusual in that they basically get away with it—Lavinia knows there’s no hard evidence and Tetsy, despite being arrested, is too loyal to implicate Zilpha. There is this terrifically unsettling bit where Lavinia almost becomes Tetsy’s replacement, and when that doesn’t go through Zilpha immediately picks another poor, lower class woman to be her new lackey and enabler, and it’s implied that this cycle will continue and the best Lavinia can do is to break free herself.

So yeah, a very interesting and complicated ending, but I’m not sure if I liked it.