Foul Matter

 Foul Matter is turning out to be quite different from Martha Grimes' other books. I see the humor and satire....but what I'm really tuning into is the focus on the past. Ned Isaly, one of the primary characters, seems to me to be almost obsessed with the idea. In one scene he is contemplating the past and thinks: "The past--there was hardly anything it wasn't or couldn't be. It could aim straight as an arrow, or walk like a drunken lout, cavort, dissemble, deceive, seduce: anything to be let in." And later when he is visiting his friend, who has a legacy of several generations living in one house, they contemplate the portraits of the ancestors gazing down on them and Saul (his friend) decides that Ned has "cracked the code" of the past. But in truth--so far--neither of them have done so. One lives with the past and one dwells on the past, but neither have come to the understanding they seek.