"Murder at the Spring Ball" by Benedict Brown

It’s 1925. In the 10 years since the death of his wife, Lord Edgington has essentially spent his time sitting in a chair, staring out a window. He’s ignored the day-to-day operation of his Surrey estate, the heart of which is a rambling old house whose number of rooms has never been determined. Edginton has gone his own way in life. The younger of two brothers, he joined Scotland Yard for a career. And then his older brother died in the Boer War, and he became the heir and eventual lord.

 

Sixteen-year-old Christopher Prentiss, one of the lord’s grandsons, knows his grandfather better than most of the rest of the family. He boards at a nearby school, where he spends considerable time avoiding the bullies, and stays with his grandfather on weekends. But the two seldom talk, and Christopher spends most of his time with the servants or with the lord’s dog Delilah. 

 

Christopher’s mother, father and older brother are among the family members called to the estate in early spring. Also on hand is the oldest daughter Belinda and her ne’er-do-well son George, along with the lord’s son Maitland and his family and the lord’s sister-in-law Clementine, who appears in her dotage and is known for bursting in song without notice. Lord Edgington has decided the time for mourning is past, and he’s going to have a spring ball. And he’s enlisting Christopher to be his assistant in organizing it.

 

Benedict Brown

Weeks later, the ball begins. A celebratory toast with an old bottle of champagne doesn’t happen, for Belinda has drunk too much already, gulps her champagne before the others, and promptly drops dead of what turns out to be cyanide poisoning. As the whole family (including Christopher) almost drank the poisoned wine, it’s obvious that someone was out to kill the entire family. The timing is such that the perpetrator must be a family member. But motives, mostly financial, abound. The police arrive to investigate, but Lord Edgington conducts his own investigation, with the help of Christopher.

 

Murder at the Spring Ball is the first of the Lord Edgington historical mysteries by Benedict Brown. (I started them out of order, first reading the fourth one, The Mystery of Mistletoe Hall.) Told from the perspective of 16-year-old Christopher, the reader gets both a fun mystery (and more than one puzzle) and something of a coming-of-age story

 

In addition to the five published Lord Edgington stories, a sixth is scheduled for publication in the spring of 2022. Brown has also written seven Izzy Palmer mystery novels and three novellas. A native of south London, he lives with his family in Spain. 

 

Related:

 

The Mystery of Mistletoe Hall by Benedict Brown.

Grierson's Raid and "The Horse Soldiers"

After I started elementary school, I became the movie partner of my mother. My father rarely went to the movies; my mother had been starstruck since she was a child. During the summer months, and on weekends during the school year, I accompanied her to one of the big theaters in downtown New Orleans to watch the latest movie she was interested in. We started with the Disney films – my earliest remembered movie is Bambi, the 1942 film which I would have seen via re-release in 1956 or 1957. 

My most vivid memory was going to the Saenger Theatre on Canal Street to see The Last Voyage, starring Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone. Released in 1959, it was a tension-filled story about a passenger liner sinking in the Pacific, with rescue boats too far away to reach it before it sank. I cried through most of the movie. My mother felt so bad for taking me to see what was an adult-themed movie that, when it ended, she took me across Canal Street to see Some Like It Hot at the Joy Theatre. It was certainly funny, but it was even more adult-themed than The Last Voyage. 

 

That same year, she took me to see The Horse Soldiers, a Civil War epic starring John Wayne and William Holden. (She liked John Wayne, but William Holden was one of her three favorite actors, with Robert Stack and Clark Gable rounding out the list.) The movie was based upon a 1956 historical novel of the same name by Harold Sinclair. The book itself was based upon a true story generally referred to as “Grierson’s Raid.” 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Poets and Poems: Paulette Guerin and "Wading through Lethe"

In Greek mythology, five rivers flowed through Hades, the underworld. The Rover Styx was the boundary between Earth and Hades. Phlegethon was the river of fire. Cocytus was the river of lamentation. Acheron was the river of sorrow. And the river forming the boundary with Elysium was Lethe, the river of forgetfulness, which flowed through the cave of Hypnos, the god of sleep. To drink of the River Lethe was to experience forgetfulness, perhaps the final step toward death. 

Poet Paulette Guerin doesn’t want to forget. She uses the Greek myth in her new collection, Wading through Lethe, to remember her family, her childhood, visits to relatives, the hurricane party in her college dorm, travels to Europe as an exchange student and vacations in the U.S., and even cleaning out the attic. She wades through the River Lethe but doesn’t drink of its forgetfulness. She may be stirring its waters, but she’s consciously doing so to not forget the experiences and people which have shaper and life and herself.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

"Broken Glass" by Alexander Hartung

Reading Broken Glass by German author Alexander Hartung is like reading a Jason Bourne thriller while simultaneously watching the movie version with Matt Damon. 

The first of the Nik Pohl detective series, Broken Glass tells the story of Pohl, a detective inspector with the Munich police department, an officer who seems more on suspension than not, with a knack for attracting criminals, violence, and the ire of his more political supervisors. Pohl is contacted by “Jon,” a mysterious individual who wants to employ Pohl to find a missing woman. Pohl resists the offer, until he finds out how much Jon knows about his life, his police work, and a woman the detective cares deeply for. Essentially, Jon blackmails Pohl into undertaking the case.

 

As he quietly, and not-so-quietly, pokes into the case, he discovers an investigation that was slipshod at bet and quickly shelved. That tells Pol that someone in the police department quashed it. And slowly his investigation leads him into a shadowing night club, sex trafficking, a health spa purporting to help recovering alcoholics, and several opportunities to get himself tortured and killed.

 

Alexander Hartung

The second novel in the Pohl series is Blood Ties. Hartung is also the author of two books in the Jan Tommen series, Until the Debt is Paid and Grave Intent, set in Berlin. Hartung says he discovered his love of thrillers and historical fiction while studying economics. He and his family live in Mannheim, Germany.

 

Broken Glass, translated by Fiona Beaton, is a fast-paced, nail-biting, and reading-on-the-edge-of-your-seat kind of book. Its hero is often just as violent as the criminals he encounters, and he encounters at all socio-economic levels. He’s resourceful at getting himself out of situations where his death seems imminent. And underneath that hard shell is a man who will sacrifice much for the people he cares about. 

Mocking the innocent

After Luke 22:66 – Luke 23:17 

The mocking begins, first the

guards and soldiers insulting,

slapping, hitting, ridiculing,

then the scribes and priests,

those venerated elites who

perform a mockery of a trial,

then the overlord, the governor

with the iron fist, the one who

sees clearly that there is no crime,

there is no criminal, yet finds

a loophole to avoid displeasing

the crowd and its leaders, even

iron-fisted rulers fear the mob, 

and sends him to the king. Who

wants a sign, wants entertainment,

wants amusement, but receives

only silence, so he adds his mocking,

dressing him like the king he’s not,

and returns him for judgment,

and still no fault or crime is found,

but the mob wants its sacrifice, 

its Passover lamb, its entertainment.

Its blood lust sated, and they choose

The thief over the innocent, they

embrace the sinful and condemn

the innocent, and the governor,

to sate the mob, gives him over

to death, washing his hands

of the whole affair but forever

associating himself with it.

 

Photograph by Akshar Dave via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Saturday Good Reads - April 2, 2022

Electronics in the classroom have been with us for at least a decade now. The pandemic expanded the influence of “ed tech,” with the even greater use of tablets and electronic classrooms. Brad East at Comment Magazine raises questions about this. Actually, it’s more than questions. We may building toward a huge educational disaster. 

The CEO of Disney found himself whipsawed in the culture wars this past week. Some employees threatened walkouts for Disney not opposing the Florida bill on teaching in kindergarten through second grade classrooms. The CEO dutifully issued a statement condemning the bill. Florida Gov. De Santis promptly called the CEO out for saying nothing about the plight of the Uigher Muslims in China (Mulan was filmed in the area). Disney doubled down. De Santis quadrupled down. Then someone leaked videos of a Disney employee meeting, where key people talked about how they had been using Disney shows and movies to push their agendas. Disney had no comment. And then came a public statement by a gay Disney employee: “Disney does not speak for me.” 

 

And I think, Disney?

 

More Good Reads

 

Writing and Literature

 

The Perils of Public Writing – Elizabeth Corey at National Affairs.

 

Conversations to the Tune of Air-Raid Sirens: Odesa Writers on Literature in Wartime – Ilya Kaminsky at The Paris Review.

 

What Killed Cultural Aspiration – Matthew Walther at The Lamp.

 

Everyone is the Hero of Their Own Story – Sarah Kades at CrimeReads.

 

The Party at Hart’s (as in Hart Crane) – Robert Clark at Image Journal.

 

Life and Culture

 

Invasion of the Fact-Checkers – Jacob Siegel at Tablet Magazine.

 

Spaces for Speech on Today’s College Campus – Elizabeth Stice at Front Porch Republic.

 

Going under with the overclass – James Panero at New Criterion.

 

Ensamples: on Chris Rock and Will Smith – Paul Hughes at Poet and Priest.

 

Actions Speak Louder than Words, or a Midwestern Accent – Glen Sharp at Front Porch Republic.

 

Poetry

 

Where Wonder Remain – Peggy Everett at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Etchings – Jerry Barrett at Gerald the Writer.

 

Poetry & digital personhood – Carmine Starnino at New Criterion.

 

Over a River Strangely Rosy: Reading Poetry in Wartime – Joan Neuberger at Los Angeles Review of Boks.

 

Faith

 

Understanding Common vs. Special Grace – Hugh Whelchel at the Institute for Faith, Work, & Economics.

 

Ukraine

 

The invasion of Ukraine has serious, unintended consequences for Russia. Here are just 5 of them – Holly Ellyat at CNBC.

 

Hard times, hard truths: We must see beyond the myths surrounding the Ukraine crisis – The Critic Magazine.

 

Ukraine war: Gruesome evidence points to war crimes on road outside Kyiv – Jeremy Bowen at BBC.

 

News Media

 

The Internet Killed Mainstream Culture – Rex Woodbury at Digital Native.

 

God is For Us – City Alight

 Painting: Reading by the shore, oil on canvas (ca. 1883-85) by Charles Sprague Pearce (1851-1914).  

The betrayal of fear

After Luke 22:54-62 

Wanting to be there,

wanting to be anywhere 

else, wanting to see

where they take him,

wanting to be invisible, 

Then three accusations,

three separate people, 

saying you were with

him, you were one 

of them, you were

with him, three

charges hurled, three

accusations denied, 

denials automatic

and reflexive, framed

by fear, no palms

in the road this time,

no cheering for the king,

no hosannas, only

anger rising, seeking

available targets. Then

he meets his eyes,

searing his soul.

The rooster crows

three times.

 

Photograph by Olesya Yemets via Unsplash. Used with permission.