Challenge Complete: Title Fight

 Title Fight Reading Challenge 2016!

Bruce at The Bookshelf Gargoyle has challenged us all to put on our gloves and shiny shorts to step into the ring for a title fight in the book world. He gave us seven categories  to fulfill in order to become a heavyweight reading champion. I've completed all the categories and added a little fancy footwork with a bonus book.

 
1. A book with something related to fighting in the title:
The Old Battle Axe by Elizabeth Holding Sanxay (3/17/16)
2. A book with someone’s title in the title:
Which Doctor by Edward Candy (1/28/16)
3. A book with onomatopoeia in the title:
The Black Rustle by Constance & Gwenyth Little(2/22/16)
4. A book with an object you might find in a boxing gym in the title:
Poacher's Bag by Douglas Clark (2/19/16)
5. A book with an injury (or a word related to or implying an injury) in the title:
The Bachelors of Broken Hill by Arthur W. Upfield (2/24/16)
6. A book with an emotion in the title:
 Make Death Love Me by Ruth Rendell (3/1/16)
7. A book with a word or phrase implying victory in the title:
 The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont by Robert Barr (1/30/16)

Bonus: The Big Smoke by Adrian Matejka [a book of poems about the life of Jack Johnson, the first African American heavy weight world champion]

 

The Big Smoke: Mini-Review

Synopsis (from the back of the book:

The legendary Jack Johnson (1878–1946) was a true American creation. The child of emancipated slaves, he overcame the violent segregationism of Jim Crow, challenging white boxers—and white America—to become the first African-American heavyweight world champion. The Big Smoke, Adrian Matejka’s third work of poetry, follows the fighter’s journey from poverty to the most coveted title in sports through the multi-layered voices of Johnson and the white women he brazenly loved. Matejka’s book is part historic reclamation and part interrogation of Johnson’s complicated legacy, one that often misremembers the magnetic man behind the myth

Like another boxing champion once said about his own boxing technique, Adrian Matejka's poetry "floats likes a butterfly and stings like a bee." The poems are smooth as silk, but pack a punch that knocks the reader out while they're busy watching the fancy verbal footwork. Using the art of monologue and dialogue Matejka shows us the many sides of the complex man who was the first African American heavyweight world champion. This is a knock-out book that proves why it was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in Poetry. ★★★★★

The Old Battle Axe/The Obstinate Murderer

I chose Elisabeth Sanxay Holding's The Old Battle Axe (1943) to help me fulfill my final category for the Title Fight Challenge and decided to read both it and the companion novel, The Obstinate Murderer in this Ace Giant edition. I first sampled Holding's work in 2014, using The Unfinished Crime as an entry for my Vintage Bingo Challenge. I mentioned at the time that while I appreciate Holding's skill in her particular method of mystery/suspense story-telling, I didn't think her style was my cup of tea any more. I enjoyed the more psychological, suspense-driven story much more in my twenties than I do now. 

And this time, I found her style to be almost in the stream-of-consciousness vein. Conversations are a bit difficult to follow with various participants saying whatever pops into their heads--irrespective of how much off-target it may be. It was particularly apparent in The Obstinate Murderer. Not only were the characters having such conversations amongst themselves, but the reader is privy to the main character's (Van Cleef's) running inner commentary--which was very stream-of-consciousness. Perhaps my concentration wasn't what it needed to be, but it seemed to me that Holding was constantly presenting the reader with allusions and references hidden in half-remarks and unfinished thoughts that were never completed. I spent my time throughout each story feeling as though I had missed several pages somewhere. I absolutely get the appeal of her style for others, but she's just not for me. ★★★

In The Old Battle Axe we are introduced to Madge de Belleforte who seemed to be a loose woman in life and in death. She arrives from Paris and shocks her sister Sharley Herriot with her appearance, a tendency to knock back double martinis, and an eye for anything in trousers. She hasn't even settled in at her sister's country house before she is found dead in the street--painted cheeks, dyed hair, and all. Sharley can't believe it and tries to convince herself that Madge isn't really dead. Questioned by the police, Sharley finds herself saying she had never seen the woman before. But why does Silas, her chauffeur and the man who brought the ladies home from the dock, back her up in it? And why does Cara, Sharley's niece, daringly and convincingly impersonate the dead woman? Only Ramon Honess, a young playboy who stands to inherit a fortune from Madge's will, sees through the deception. And his unexpected appearance threatens exposure of the deception and forces a cornered killer to strike again.

The Obstinate Murderer (1938): The rich playboy Van Cleef, our hero and reluctant amateur detective, is called upon by Emelia Swan to help her with a situation. She claims that someone is trying to backmail her. Along the way, he picks up Russell Blackmon, an abrasive young man of advance intellectual capacity whom he encountered when Russell was a child. But when they arrive at the country guesthouse they find themselves in the midst of a sinister web of fear and terror that seems to hold the occupants in its grasp. Van Cleef wavers between trying to make sense of the horrible chain of events and dabbling in a bit of romance with the young woman whom Emelia has accused of the blackmail. There are several attempted poisonings--harkening back to the suspicious death of Emelia's husband, Bill Swan, but things get desperate when the actual deaths occur.


For more positive reactions to Holding's work (particularly The Obstinate Murderer), please be sure to check out Curtis's post at The Passing Tramp and Sergio's post for Vintage Bingo last year at Tipping My Fedora.

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Each of these novels have a brunette on the cover and, so, this counts for the "Brunette" category on the Golden Vintage Scavenger Hunt card.

Make Death Love Me: Review

The next time I do fight I'll make death love me, for I'll contend even with his pestilent scythe.... 
~from Shakepeare's Antony & Cleopatra
quoted in Make Death Love Me (1979) by Ruth Rendell

Rendell's book brings togeth two story lines. We are introduced first to Alan Groombridge, an unhappily married manager at a small bank in a Suffolk village. Groombridge is a bookish daydreamer. A man who, when his shotgun wedding brought him a dull and unfulfilling life, retreated to the pages of poetry and plays and the romantic classics of the past. Each week when he must get into the safe, he allows himself to fantasize about running off with 3000 pounds of the bank's money. That would be the amount he has calculated would allow him to spend one year of freedom doing exactly what he pleased in a small bed-sit somewhere--somewhere far away from his wife and his obnoxious father-in-law. But he knows he could never really do it. When you have a small bank with only two employees and one of the employees disappears at the same time as nearly half of the on-hand cash....well, it wouldn't take a Sherlock Holmes to figure out who took the cash.

Enter two young misfits who are down on their luck, without jobs or a suitable source of income and who happen to meet up with someone who gives them (unknowingly) just the information needed to plot a bank robbery at Groombridge's bank. They plan the robbery for lunchtime and manage to make off with 4000 pounds--and the leggy, busty teller Joyce who has the misfortune to see their faces. The young men panic and set Joyce up as an unwilling roommate while they try to figure out what to do with her so they can make their escape.

Meanwhile, Groombridge was busy fondling his 3000 pounds in a closet and takes the opportunity presented by the robbery to disappear as well. He runs away to London with his small fortune to finally realize his dream. He finds the perfect room in a basement filled to the brim with books and also finds his ideal woman and settles down to enjoy her and her books. The setup is perfect--the police and his family believe that both he and Joyce have been snatched by the robbers, so no one is really hunting him for his embezzlement. But the chivalrous streak that makes Groombridge love the poetry and classic romances and tales of knights-errant won't allow him to ignore clues to the robbers' identities when they present themselves. He can't quite bear to go to the police with his knowledge, after all they will make him give back the money and return to the bosom of his "loving" family, so he follows the trail himself hoping to concoct a story that will allow him to rescue Joyce and manage to maintain the new life he has begun to build. 

Rendell gives us a dark drama filled with enough tragedy for a Shakespeare play. There are the pathetic, panicky bank robbers and poor Groombridge and his dismal home life. The two bright spots are Joyce's strong character in the face of her imprisonment and the brief moments when Groombridge is allowed to live out his dream. This isn't really a mystery--there's no secret about who did what, but there is suspense in waiting to find out if the robbers will be caught and what will happen to Joyce and Alan Groombridge. Rendell provides deft characterizations and superb, if rather bleak atmosphere. ★★★ and a half.

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This fulfills the "Skull" category on the Silver Vintage Scavenger Hunt card.

The Bachelors of Broken Hill: Review

The Bachelors of Broken Hill (1950) is the 14th mystery in Arthur W. Upfield's series which features Inspector Napoleon "Bony" Bonaparte. It also finds Bony slightly out of his element--in the city rather than in the bush area and the sheep stations where he generally operates. 

When the police force at Broken Hill are faced with two cyanide poisoning deaths which both they and an obnoxious, self-important inspector from Sydney are unable to solve, Bony asks to be "seconded" to the New South Wales Police Department to bring his expert skills to bear. A third poisoning occurs shortly after he begins his investigation and he begins to see a pattern. All three victims are older, single men. All three die in crowded, public places while drinking tea or beer. All three are very messy when at table. And witnesses recall a woman being near the victims shortly before they died--though there is some disagreement about her description. The one item they all agree on--she was carrying a very old-fashioned blue purse with red, drawstring straps.

Even though one death occurs after Bony arrives, most of the clues are old, the crime scenes have been tidied, and the witnesses have to be mollified after being mishandled by the policeman from Sydney. But Bony is used to following the most meager of trails and employing unorthodox measures to find his man...or woman as the case may be. He'll make use of a burglar on holiday, an amateur sketch artist, and a barkeeper-turned-taxi-man as well as convincing the local constabulary to turn a blind eye to a bit of benevolent burgling in the quest for justice. The first thing he'll have to determine--does she kill out of an unreasonable hatred for messy bachelors or is there method to her madness? Perhaps she's playing the trick of hiding one important death amongst the others. Once Bony discovers the answer to that conundrum and makes the connection to a murder by glass knife he's well on his way to capturing his killer.

It is always a delight to watch the unorthodox, half-Aboriginal, half-white detective operate. It is particularly fun to watch him one-up the obnoxious Inspector Stillman from Sydney. Bony's character is self-assured ("I always finish a race, always finalise the case I consent to take up.") as well as intelligent, and utterly charming. It doesn't take him long to have the shop girls, who so recently became anti-police under the questioning of Stillman, eating out of his hand and going out of there way to help him identify the mysterious woman who hovers near every murder. 

In addition to the usual police procedural, this particular outing provides an interesting character study. Bony must first understand the character of the victims before he can begin to understand the character and psychology of the woman who kills them. The ending is a bit darker than the usual fare by Upfield--giving the reader a very intimate look at what could drive someone to kill in the manner portrayed in the book. A thoroughly good read. ★★★★

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This fulfills the "Dead Body" category on the Golden Vintage Scavenger Hunt card.

All challenges fulfilled: Vintage Mystery Challenge, Mount TBR Challenge, 100 Plus Challenge, Outdo Yourself, Travel the World, Cloak & Dagger, Charity Challenge, Triple Dog Dare, A-Z Mystery Author Challenge, Mystery Reporter, My Kind of Mystery, Title Fight, Mad Reviewer,

The Black Rustle (1942): Review

 And then, directly above me, in the attic, I heard her quite distinctly--a light, gentle footfall and the whispered rustle of a skirt.

According to a Packett family legend, the little lady in black, a doll-like statue which normally stands on their country cottage mantle, leaves her post periodically, transforms into a ghost, and walks the floors whenever she gets perturbed by family behavior. Well....the weekend family get-together must have really upset her because she keeps disappearing and reappearing faster than a jack-in-the-box on an endless loop. But who wouldn't be upset when it seems that the family membesr are killing each other off?

Marina Hays is not a member of the family. But she has been invited to join the weekend festivities by her friends Marge and Elizabeth. She wasn't very enthusiastic and had to be convinced. And even though Bruce Collyer, the handsome cousin who own the cottage, seems interested in her (even though he can't seem to remember her name), it isn't long before she wishes she had stayed home. Because she didn't know "Stay Alive" was going to be one of the games. Elizabeth is the first victim. Initially, it looks like the poor swimmer just go in over her head and has perished in an accident. But then Marina notices a couple of items out of place and mentions them to Bruce Collyer (owner of the cottage). He makes sure the coroner is aware that the accident might really be murder. An investigation has barely begun before we have victim number two. This time the victim had been whispering about a secret. Did someone kill to make sure the secret would never be revealed? Marina's powers of observation will be needed again to help the authorities unravel the mystery.

Constance and Gwenyth Little wrote 21 mysteries together. All but one, their debut novel The Grey Mist Murder, had "Black" in the title and they all fall into the comic romantic mystery subgenre. The Black Rustle features the romance between Bruce and Marina--but what a romance. Bruce seems to think that the way to win the girl is to get her to hold boards while he nails and screws and saws. Oh--and call her anything but her name: Maggie and Malvina are favorites. It's also a great idea to do your courting in a cottage where everybody treats everybody else's room like their own--you never know who might pop in while you're whispering sweet nothings....or changing into your bathing suit. When you sit down and think about it, all that casual semi-nudity seems like it would be pretty risqué for the 1940s, but the Little sisters tell their story with such innocent comic charm that you don't sit down and think about it at the time.

These charming, cozy mysteries are great fun. Intricate puzzle plots--no. But interesting and original characters? Yes. The books are written with plenty of humor and with tongue firmly planted in cheek--especially when it comes to some of the murder methods. While they're often not the most practical method of disposing of an unwanted relative (rival, purse-string-holder, etc.), they're usually quite ingenious and well-thought out by their creators. A nice comfortable read from the vintage years. ★★★


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This fulfills the "Statue" category on the Golden Vintage Scavenger Hunt card.

Poacher's Bag: Review

Poacher's Bag (1980) is the twelfth novel in Douglas Clark's Masters and Green police procedural series. The series is quite solid in both procedure and characterization--and it has the added bonus of educating the reader on all sorts of medical topics. At the time this novel was written, Clark had worked in the pharmaceutical industry for 18 years and was well-up on diseases, drugs, and their effects and the information he used to spice up his mystery novels was not as well-known to the general public. You didn't have various drugs appearing in every other commercial on the television. And he managed to drop the information in--primarily through dialogue--without it feeling like a lecture.

Poacher's Bag is no different. Superintendent George Masters and Inspector Bill Green take off for a rare weekend getaway. They have been invited to spend their holiday at the home of Master's force-of-nature mother-in-law, Bella Bartholomew. They think it's just a spur-of-the-moment invite, but it turns out that Bella intended them to make up her wedding party. She had planned on marrying her neighbor, ex-Cambridge don, Haydn Prior. 

They've barely begun to congratulate her when she tells them the wedding's off. No, they haven't had a falling out. Hadyn is dead and, though he was a man well along in years and his death has been attributed to a heart attack, both she and the police insist he was murdered. The local force believe they have their man--a poacher who shot Hadyn (he says because he was startled) and then chased the poor man causing a heart attack from over-exertion. The poacher was found over the body with his hand inside Hadyn's coat. He says to check for a heartbeat. The police say caught in the act of attempted robbery.

Bella knows the poacher and insists that he did not deliberately shoot her fiance and that he would never have tried to rob him and she wants Masters and Green to discover the real cause of Hadyn's death and the real murderer. This puts the two men in a bit of a spot. Being Yard men, they can't just start investigating on someone else's patch without cause--and a mother-in-law's "feelings" and intuition don't exactly constitute "cause." But the more she tells them about Hadyn's odd behavior in the days leading up to the shooting, the more interested Masters gets. And when a surprise claimant shows up to contest Hadyn Prior's will, Masters really begins to smell a rat. But how can he find out what he needs to know and manage to help the local constabulary to the solution without stepping all over their toes?

Clark does his usual fine job with the mystery set up and getting all the players in place. This one is a bit less of a puzzler--it doesn't take long to know who the villain of the piece is. The real question is how was it done and how Masters will diplomatically bring the dirty work to the attention of the local police. It is great fun watching his verbal fancy footwork. His mother-in-law is a finely drawn character and it's worth the ride just to see her interactions with Bill Green. A highly enjoyable entry in a consistently entertaining series. ★★★★

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Fulfills the "Green Object" on the Vintage Silver Scavenger Hunt card. 
 

The Triumphs of Eugène Valmont: Mini-Review

The irony of The Triumphs of Eugène Valmont (1906) by Robert Barr is that the book begins with Valmont's biggest failure and proceeds to relate various other incidents where Valmont does not exactly shine. Assigned to protect the legendary diamond necklace once destined for Marie Antoinette, Valmont's job is to ensure its safety until it has been sold at auction and is delivered toits new rightful owner. He is easily misdirected and defeated by an amateur and dismissed from the French police force. He is not dismissed because he failed. He is not dismissed because he arrested the wrong man. He is dismissed because he made France the laughingstock of Europe. 

Other adventures include infiltrating an anarchist group and substituting a spectacular firework for a bomb (one of the few escapades that actually goes well); the discovery of an ingenious fraud that results in his paying the criminals five shillings a week; helping the wrong man escape prison; helping to commit a murder; and having the wool pulled over his eyes by a pair of young lovers.

Valmont is credited by various crime fiction authorities as "the first, most important humorous detective in English literature" (Steinbrummer & Penzler, Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection). While it is true that I can see some elements of the pompous yet bumbling Inspector Clouseau in Valmont, I can't say that the humor is all that striking. Valmont is incredibly long-winded and repetitive in his narrative. And the irony of his inflated sense of his abilities doesn't provide the sense of the comic that one might expect. 

Not one of my most enjoyable forays into early twentieth century mysteries. ★★

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This counts for the "Town Scene" category on the Golden Scavenger Hunt.

All Challenges Fulfilled: Vintage Mystery Challenge, 100 Plus Challenge, Mount TBR Challenge, My Kind of Mystery, Cloak & Dagger, Title Fight, Century of Books, Charity Challenge, Outdo Yourself, Triple Dog Dare, Mad Reviewer

Which Doctor: Review

Dr. Honeychurch: But since I can’t claim to be anything of a pharmacological chemist myself, I can’t be sure that there is any simple quantitative mode of assay available for pethidine in any case. There’s a crude biological method, of course; rats’ tails are exposed to radiant heat—

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Inspector Burnivel: Well, just remember that we’re after a murderer; I don’t know if we’ve got the time to tinker about with any other sort of rat.

Which Doctor (1954) by Edward Candy, the pseudonym for Dr. Barbara Alison Boodson Neville, is set at the Beantwich-Bannister Hospital for Children. Professor Fabian Honeychurch arrives for a scheduled Royal Society of Medicine conference in a rather unorthodox manner. He crawls over a balcony where two boys have their beds--making the acquaintance of the rather precocious Tom Bryant and observing the sleeping Teddy Bannister. Later that night, the brilliant but unpleasant Dr. Martin Sandeman (featured speaker at the conference) is bludgeoned to death in the grounds and Tom disappears from his bed. Has the boy run away--the popular answer--or did he see something in the night that caused the murderer to snatch him or worse? 

The heavy favorite for chief suspect is Dr. Rutherford, Sandeman's colleague, who had a disagreement with Sandeman that night and who was going to lose his job due to Sandeman's influence on the head of the hospital. Inspector Burnivel from Scotland Yard is called in and seems to be casting his net far and wide for suspects--focusing first on one and then another. Honeychurch has his own ideas, particularly about the innocence of Rutherford, but each man's first thoughts will be proved wrong before the crime is brought home to the proper villain. And they will have to wade through a controlled experiment, possible drug abuse, and a few psychiatric diagnoses to find the answers.

This was a more satisfying read than Candy's Words for Murder Perhaps which I read in 2014. Words was a decent mystery, but this has an extra layer. Professor Honeychurch is a likeable character and I particularly enjoyed his interactions with Tom Bryant and Rutherford. It's a shame that Tom didn't get more time in the story because he was really quite engaging. The mystery did keep me guessing. I was quite sure I had spotted the culprit and the motive...but Candy led me astray. My main quibble with her is that she spreads red herrings about liberally, but doesn't quite give enough genuine clues. Ironically, this outing, her first mystery, does do a better job at this than Words which was her final mystery novel. ★★★ and 3/4--almost four (and rounded to four on Goodreads).

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This fulfills the "Nurse on the cover" category for the Golden Vintage Scavenger Hunt (she's lurking amongst the doctors) as well as the "blunt instrument" category in the Mystery Reporter Challenge.

Complete List of Challenges fulfilled: 100 Plus Challenge, Outdo Yourself, Vintage Mystery Challenge, My Kind of Mystery, Mount TBR Challenge, What's in a Name, Cloak & Dagger, Triple Dog Dare, A-Z Mystery Author Challenge, Mystery Reporter, Women Challenge, Title Fight, 52 in 52 Weeks 

Title Fight Reading Challenge

Ding, Ding, Ding! Pull on your gloves and shiny shorts and step into the ring for the

 Title Fight Reading Challenge 2016!

Bruce at The Bookshelf Gargoyle has challenged us all to a title fight in the book world:

Think you’ve got what it takes to slam seven books over the course of the year? Easy, right? But what if they had to have something…special…about their titles?

Still game?

Then check out the rules at the link above. Basically, he's given us seven categories and we must find those words or related-words in the titles of the books we read. I scanned through my TBR list and, amazingly enough, I have books that will fit every categories. I'll list possible titles below and will then confirm with dates and links to reviews.

 
1. A book with something related to fighting in the title:
The Old Battle Axe by Elizabeth Holding Sanxay (3/17/16)
2. A book with someone’s title in the title:
Which Doctor by Edward Candy (1/28/16)
3. A book with onomatopoeia in the title:
The Black Rustle by Constance & Gwenyth Little(2/22/16)
4. A book with an object you might find in a boxing gym in the title:
Poacher's Bag by Douglas Clark (2/19/16)
5. A book with an injury (or a word related to or implying an injury) in the title:
The Bachelors of Broken Hill by Arthur W. Upfield (2/24/16)
6. A book with an emotion in the title:
 Make Death Love Me by Ruth Rendell (3/1/16)
7. A book with a word or phrase implying victory in the title:
 The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont by Robert Barr (1/30/16)

Bonus: The Big Smoke by Adrian Matejka [a book of poems about the life of Jack Johnson, the first African American heavy weight world champion]