Sally Wright's "Watches of the Night"

I’ve written before about how much I like the mystery novels of Sally Wright. Her detective, Ben Reese, is a university archivist and tenured faculty member, so he gets sabbaticals for travel, study and (surprise) solving mysteries. The stories are set in the early 1960s.

In Watches of the Night, a patient and doctor with connections to the same hospital in Britain die. One appears a suicide, the other a hiking accident. But the doctor has left behind a letter. And Reese is eventually drawn into it by his friend (and possible love interest) Kate Lindsay, only to find that he’s confronting ghosts from his experiences in World War II. At the same time, he’s battling political intrigue at the university, with his president aiming to get him fired.

The action moves from England and Scotland to Ohio and Kentucky, and finally to Italy. And it is in Italy that Reese will meet his war ghosts and embrace love.

Wright produces (notice I didn’t say Wright writes) beautifully crafted stories, and Watches of the Night is no exception. And the reader doesn’t get only a good mystery story. Along the way, you learn things, and sitting in on academic lectures about preservation and conservation techniques.

But it is the character of Ben Reese that’s the main attraction. Modeled on an actual friend of the author’s, her detective is a man of integrity and a quiet faith. This story includes details of his war experiences and serious injuries, as well as his extensive recuperation afterward.

Watches of the Night is a great and entertaining read.

(I did not receive this book from the publisher. It was a Christmas present from my wife.)

The Mysteries of Sally Wright

Some years back, I had discovered Sally Wright’s mysteries, with her university archivist Ben Reese finding himself in the middle all sorts of murder of mayhem. What I liked (and still like) about the Ben Reese stories was that they’re intelligently written stories that respect their readers. I had read two of her mysteries when they published in the 1990s, and then the bookstore I found them at closed, and I couldn’t find them at other stores. I lost touch.

I was in Big Sleep Books in St. Louis recently. A small shop in what we St. Louisans call the Central West End, Big Sleep is devoted to one genre of books – mysteries, broadly defined to include suspense and a few related areas. I wandered alphabetically about the store, and then found myself looking at the Ws. And there was Sally Wright. The store had the two mysteries I had previously read -- Pride and Predator and Publish and Perish -- and one additional one – Pursuit and Persuasion (yes, the titles sound like Jane Austen; they also sound like Dorothy Sayers). I bought all three.

Set in the early 1960s, Pursuit and Persuasion finds Ben Reese in Scotland and briefly in England, helping a former student and assistant find out what happened to the woman who left the student a large estate in Scotland – and a letter indicating that she was likely murdered. Reese has two mysteries to solve – what caused the deceased woman to make the young woman her heir to the estate, and who, if anyone, killed the deceased.

The first thing a reader notices about Pursuit and Persuasion and all of Wright’s mysteries is how well written they are. The next thing is how many characters are involved in the story, and the list of characters at the beginning of the story is immensely helpful, as is the map of the estate. (I love mysteries with maps like this – like the old S.S. Van Dine mysteries from the 1920s and 1930s).

This time, Reese finds himself running up against a mania – a mania known only to collectors whose desire to possess sometimes lead to murder. And Wright introduces a love interest, or actually, two potential love interests, for Reese.

Pursuit and Persuasion is a great read and great fun to rediscover. Best of all – there are three more in the series I haven’t read.

Sally Wright's Mysteries

About 10 years ago, I was wandering the shelves in a local Christian bookstore. I was looking in the fiction section, and almost by habit I went to the end of the alphabet first (likely a feeble attempt to counter the curse of alphabetical order; a lifetime of standing at the end of the line or sitting in the back of the classroom can do weird things to you).

There, in the bottom shelf of the last row, I saw a book called Publish and Perish by Sally Wright. It was a mystery, with a historian named Ben Reese for a detective, set at an Ohio college. It was published by Ballantine, a mainstream publishing house, and nothing about it suggested a reason for it being found in a Christian bookstore. I read the first page or two, was impressed with the writing, and bought it. What I found remarkable about it was that it reflected a Christian faith without hitting the reader over the head with it.

It was also a great story.

The bookstore later closed, I went through a major career change and lost track of Sally Wright. That is, until I wandered into Big Sleep Books in St. Louis' Central West End about three weeks ago. It's a bookshop devoted exclusively to mysteries and suspense. My wife and I wandered around, I gravitated to the end of the alphabet (seriously, this is like Pavlov's dog) and I found Sally Wright again. I picked up Pride and Predator and Pursuit and Persuasion, and learned there were at least two more in the Ben Reese series. I'm well into Pride and Predator now, and it's delightful -- well written, well plotted and containing a subtle theme of faith throughout.

I also bought Carlos Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind and Arturo Perez-Reverte's The Painter of Battles. I wanted to reread the Zafon book before tackling his latest work translated into English, The Angel's Game, and I'm a huge fan of Perez-Reverte. But those are stories for another day.

It's a great pleasure to rediscover Sally Wright.