"Deceitful Above All Things" by Charles Hack

Hank Lin has returned home to the Lake Tahoe area. In his mid-30s, he thought he had an Army career as a criminal investigator, and a very good one, until his vehicle hit an IED, killing most of the people in his unit. He lost a close friend and his career; his back injuries were such that he was given a medical discharge. 

Now he’s home, attending the funeral of his father and visiting with his Colorado-based sister and her family. The service is led by Pastor Mason West, Hank’s boyhood best friend who’s senses the turmoil Hank’s experiencing and is determined to get him to talk about his faith. Also attending is Deputy Sheriff Sierra McLean, Hank’s former girlfriend whom he hasn’t seen for 15 years. She happens to be running for sheriff in the next election, replacing her own recently deceased father.

 

Sierra soon has a major case to investigate, one in which she herself finds the victim during a morning jog in the woods. And it quickly becomes personal – the dead man, an apparent suicide – is her uncle, a quality control consultant who’s been doing work for the big casino and resort development under construction. Because of Sierra’s personal connection, the mayor and the country chairman intervene, bringing in detectives from Reno. And the detectives seem less than competent.

 

Charles Hack

Hank helps Sierra determine that the crime is not a suicide but a murder. And since he’s at loose ends, he begins to quietly investigate on his own. And soon he’s drawn into another murder, corruption, and deception on a grand scale. 

 

Deceitful Above All Things is the first of the Hank Lin mysteries by Charles Hack. The title is taken from the Book of Jeremiah: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? (verse 17:9, English Standard Version). It’s a well-paced, well-written story with interesting characters (including the minor ones) with a thrilling climax. It also nicely balances the discussions of faith, making them an important part of the story without overwhelming the story itself.

 

Hack is the author of the space opera / sci-fi Space Warfare Group novels. Deceitful Above All Things is his first Hank Lin mystery. He was a licensed electrical engineer for 20 years before retiring and beginning full-time Christian ministry. He’s currently a pastor and received a master’s degree in systematic theology. Hack lives with his family in Nevada.

 

Some Thursday Readings

 

“A Birthday,” poem by Christina Rossetti – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Poet Laura: Possibilities – Michelle Rinaldi Ortega at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Thinking About Wendell Berry’s Leftist Lament (and More) – Russell Arben Fox at Front Porch Republic.

 

Surrender at Appomattox: Photos and Drawings – National Review.

 

Great Neck, Westport, and The Great Gatsby: 99 Years Later – Eric Warner at WSHU.

"The Tattoo Murder" by Roy Lewis

Eric Ward is back. After a diminished role in The Slaughterhouse Murder by Roy Lewis, the former police detective turned attorney has a starring role in The Tattoo Murder.  

Ward is retained by what at first appears a casual acquaintance at a bankers’ dinner. An executive with a merchant banking firm in Newcastle is worried about an investment in a major development project in the city. One of the key people involved in the project is another attorney, Jason Sullivan. Sullivan is the attorney and lover of Ward’s ex-wife and one of the reasons why they were divorced. 

 

If Sullivan is involved, then it’s likely his ex-wife’s business is one of the investors in the project. Complicating everything is that Sullivan seems to be missing; his project accountant is nearly beside himself with concern about being held responsible for certain investments made with money for the development project. And Sullivan is at the center of it all.

 

Ward, after a somewhat angry meeting with his ex-wife, heads off to the northern French coast, where Sullivan is likely to be, where he meets an attractive woman who works for the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, who’s also looking for Sullivan. Sullivan has a painting, a painting looted from the Rijksmuseum during the Nazi occupation. The museum wants the painting back and is willing to pay for it. 

 

Roy Lewis

Then the middleman who is supposed to be arranging the meeting with Sullivan is found dead by hanging. It looks like suicide, but it will turn out to be murder.

 

In The Tattoo Murder, Ward finds himself dealing with Nazi art, an ex-wife’s lover, missing funds, and rising gangland tensions – and that’s only for a start. The story moves quickly, requiring (and deserving) a close reading to keep track of all the plot developments and characters’ motives. 

 

Lewis is the author of some 60 other mysteries, novels, and short story collections. His Inspector Crow series includes A Lover Too Many, Murder in the Mine, The Woods Murder, Error of Judgment, and Murder for Money, among others. The Eric Ward series, of which The Sedleigh Hall Murder is the first (and originally published as A Certain Blindness in 1981), includes 17 novels. The Arnold Landon series is comprised of 22 novels. Lewis lives in northern England. 

 

It’s a cracking good story, and it’s good to see Eric Ward back to the major role in it.

 

Related:

 

The Sedleigh Hall Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Farming Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Quayside Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Diamond Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Geordie Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Shipping Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The City of London Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Apartment Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Spanish Villa Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Marriage Murder by Roy Lewis. 

 

A Cotswolds Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Wasteful Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Phantom Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Slaughterhouse Murder by Roy Lewis.

"The Kidnap Murder Case" by S.S. Van Dine

Of the 12 Philo Vance mysteries by S.S. Van Dine, only two weren’t made into movies. Several actors played the detective in the various films, including William Powell (also known for The Thin Man movies with Myrna Loy), Basil Rathbone, Paul Lukas, Warren William, Edmund Lowe, and Grant Richards. Powell played in four, the most of any in the group. 

The novels were suited for adaptation to the big screen. They often read like expanded movie scripts. Settings were almost all interiors, making them easy to recreate in studio stages. Of the 10 adaptations, only one – “The Scarab Murder Case” – hasn’t survived. In the early 1930s, Warner Brothers hired Van Dine to write a series of scenarios for 12, two-reel films, each about 20 minutes. Released in 1931 and 1932, they featured Dr. Crabtree and Inspector Carr as investigating detectives. The films have all survived, but the scenarios written by Van Dine have not.

The Kidnap Murder Case is one of the two Philo Vance stories not filmed (the other is The Winter Murder Case, Van Dine’s last work). First published in 1936, it is built upon the kidnapping cases that were, unfortunately, common and sensationalized in the 1920s and 1930s (the Lindbergh baby kidnapping being the most famous). 

Kaspar Keating is something of a playboy and gambler, and he’s apparently kidnapped from his home in Manhattan. But the kidnapping features some odd clues, as Philo Vance soon ferrets out. His pajamas and toothbrush are also missing. A ladder is found leaning against the second story window of Keating’s bedroom, but little weight has been placed on it, judging by the ground indentations. Keating’s wife Madelaine heard someone moving around the room and called out, but there had been no answer. And Keating was desperate to raise money for a gambling debt.

The household is filled with odd characters as well. Madelaine’s mother and brother live on the third floor, and neither liked the missing Keating. The butler seems shifty; with a name like “Weem,” he’s something straight out of Dickens. Keating’s brother Kenyon lives not far away, and he controls the family purse strings. He’s also in love with his brother’s wife. A plan to catch the kidnappers is foiled with Madelaine’s mother attempts to retrieve the money in Central Park, and then Madelaine herself is kidnapped.

S.S. Van Dine in his later years

The story ranges far afield from the Keating brownstone, and that may be one reason why it didn’t lend itself as readily to a film adaptation. But it has all the classic Philo Vance attributes – the New York City setting, a psychological approach to finding the criminal, Vance confounding and surpassing the investigating policemen, and the detective’s rather famous nonchalance and projection of boredom. 

Willard Huntington Wright (1888-1939) was an art critic who had been literary editor of the Los Angeles Times, an editor of The Smart Set, a novelist, an art historian, and art exhibition organizer. A friend of H.L. Mencken and an admirer of the novels of Theodore Dreiser, Wright hated romance and detective fiction with a passion, until he needed money. In 1926, he published the first Philo Vance story, The Benson Murder Case, with Scribners. And he used the pen name “S.S. Van Dine.” 

The Kidnap Murder Case is one of the few in which the villain becomes apparent sooner than Van Dine likely intended. But it is a fascinating story nonetheless, including scenes of gun violence and one in which Philo Vance and the narrator Van come very close to being killed.

Related:

The Benson Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Canary Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Greene Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Bishop Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Scarab Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Kennel Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Dragon Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Casino Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine. 

The Garden Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

Top photograph: S.S. Van Dine and William Powell on the set of one of the early Philo Vance films.

“Ice Blue” by Emma Jameson

Chief Superintendent Anthony Hetheridge of Scotland Yard, aka the Baron of Wellgrave, has barely recovered from a close personal brush with death. But he’s gotten through it. He arrives one morning at the Yard to find two officers involved in a very loud and very public argument over the conduct of an investigation. One of them is Detective Sergeant Kate Wakefield, who was born and raised in London’s East End, about as far from the privileged life of Hetheridge as you can find. 

Hetheridge has Wakefield join his investigative team. Over time he learns that she has a mentally disabled brother and a nephew living at home with her, the nephew a gift from a sister serving jail time. 

The team is called to investigate a particularly gruesome murder in very upscale Belgravia. A man has been beaten to death with a fireplace poker, his face almost obliterated. Complicating the investigation is the man’s wife, a former romantic interest of Hetheridge’s. The victim was a rather nasty piece of bad news, hated by almost everyone who knew him. The investigation has no lack of suspects.

Ice Blue by Emma Jameson is the first of five “blue” murder stories in the Lord and Lady Hetheridge detective series. It superficially resembles the Thomas Lynley and Barbara Havers detective series of Elizabeth George, but the resemblance is only that – superficial. Hethbridge and Wakefield have very different characters than those in the Inspector Lynley series.

Emma Jameson

In addition to the Hetheridge series, Jameson has a second series of novels featuring the amateur detective Dr. Benjamin Bones. The series begins in Cornwall during World War II, and it has a companion series called “The Magic of Cornwall.” Jameson is currently working on the third Dr. Bones mystery.

The highlight of Ice Blue is watching the unfolding relationship between Hetheridge and Wakefield as they go about their investigation. They’re attracted to each other but maintain a professional working relationship, with only an occasional slip that surprises them both. 

It’s an entertaining read, and I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the series.

Top photograph: Homes in Belgravia by Paul Farmer via Wikimedia Commons.

“The Irrationalist” by Andrew Pessin

Was the philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650), the man known as the father of Western philosophy, murdered?

Descartes officially died in Stockholm, Sweden, from pneumonia. Sweden was the most powerful nation in Europe at the time, and its queen, Christiana, collected everything imaginable, including academics and philosophers. In 1996, based on a letter by the court physician, a German writer hypothesized that Descartes may actually have been poisoned.

But the natural causes for his death remained accepted.

In The Irrationalist: The Tragic Murder of Rene Descartes, author Andrew Pessin has written a fictional account of the philosopher’s death indeed being murder. And Pessin constructs a fascinating murder mystery with a very unlikely detective.

It’s a wonderfully intriguing story.

Adrien Baillet is sent from the Jesuit school where he serves the rector to Stockholm, to represent the school with the Swedish government. Baillet is not a Jesuit; in fact, he’s not much of anything except a servant to the rector. But the school decides it is him who must be sent. When he arrives, he discovers that his school’s most famous graduate, Rene Descartes, has died. The French ambassador and the Swedish ambassador decide between them that Baillet must investigate, to put the rumors about murder to rest.

And so Baillet bumbles and stumbles his way through the investigation. And he’s told, more than once, that he must know the dead man’s life to know how he died, and, if it’s murder, why.

The story unfolds in two primary narratives – the life of Descartes and the investigation by Baillet. Eventually they converge, and Baillet indeed discovers that what happened to Descartes is buried deep in the man’s past, a past that includes his education, his becoming a soldier, the Thirty Years War, and the contemporary politics of Europe, Sweden, and France in 1650.

Andrew Pessin

And the murder investigator may just discover some of his own history. Baillet will find himself attacked, his rooms ransacked, and more than one knife at his throat. The stakes are high in the most powerful monarchy in Europe, and someone, perhaps more than just one, is playing for keeps. The tension continues to build until the very end.

Pessin, a professor of philosophy at Connecticut College, is also the author of The 60-Second Philosopher, Uncommon Sense: The Strangest Ideas from the Smartest Philosophers, The God Question: What Famous Thinkers from Plato to Dawkins have said about the Divine, and other works. The Irrationalist is his first work of fiction.

Well research and including real people as many of the characters, it’s a story that never flags. Here’s hoping Professor Pessin continues to write historical fiction.

Top photograph: Rene Descartes.

“The Draycott Murder Mystery” by Molly Thynne

John Leslie is a young tenant farmer on an estate. He’s engaged to marry a young woman, Lady Cynthia Bell, who’s a few social stations above him. And they argue about it, because her mother is opposed to a marriage with a man “of no wealth” and John feeling at a decided disadvantage.

Early one evening, during several days of almost gale-like conditions, they meet in the fields, argue again, and John goes stomping off for hours. When he returns to his farmstead, he finds the door open and banging in the wind. He also finds a woman he’s never seen before, seated at a desk as if in the process of writing. And she’s dead, shot in the head.

He calls the police, and the police are determined to collar him for the murder. Cynthia callas upon a good older friend, Allen Fayre, who persuades one of the top criminal law attorney in Britain to take on the case. But nothing goes as expected. And Fayre finds himself playing amateur detective, scrounging for what few clues are available.

The Draycott Murder Mystery by Molly Thynne (1881-1950) was published in 1928, and was the first of six mysteries Thynne published between 1928 and 1933 (and now being republished by Dean Street Press). And then she stopped writing.

Molly Thynne as a young girl

Thynne was unusual for a mystery writer. Of aristocratic lineage, she had an abundance of marquesses and dukes in her family background. A cousin was a bridesmaid in the wedding of the Duke of York (later King George VI). She also had some artistic genes in her pedigree – James MacNeil Whistler was a great uncle, and her family’s circles included Rudyard Kipling and Henry James.

By 1930, Thynne was one of the best known women mystery writers in the United Kingdom, but public awareness quickly died after she wrote her final story in 1933.

Published in the U.K. under the title The Red Dwarf (the name of a popular writing pen), The Draycott Murder Mystery is a minor masterpiece of detective procedure and process. The solutions to its several mysteries (yes, there are more than only the murder) lie buried in the past, in tangled and forgotten relationships, romances, and blackmail. It’s still a good story.

Top photograph by Karen Arnold via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.