I read a series of books by author Victoria Abbott in 2020 that I really liked – The Book Collector Mysteries. They were:
The Christie Curse
The Sayers Swindle
The Wolfe Widow
The Marsh Madness
The Hammett Hex
The series revolves around Jordan Kelly, who is back in her hometown, living with her not-quite-on-the-straight-and-narrow uncles after a treacherous ex-boyfriend put her crippling debt by running up massive credit card bills. She finds a job with local recluse Vera Van Alst (the most hated person in town), who likes her collection of rare books, and not much else, but the position includes room and board, and Jordan gets to work for Vera. Her job entails researching and tracking down rare books for her employer, and her first assignment (in The Christie Curse) is the rumored play that Christie wrote while she “disappeared” briefly in 1926 (reappearing eleven days later at a health spa under an assumed name).
The task seems simple, if challenging, until Jordan discovers her predecessor in the position died while looking for the play. That complicates things a bit.
I enjoyed this series a lot. A lot, a lot. I really like what Otto Penzler calls ‘bibliomysteries.’ (BRB, buying books). I googled the author to see when the next book was coming out, and discovered a couple of things.
1 – Victoria Abbott is the pen name for a mother-daughter writing duo. 2 – their website hasn’t been updated in years (and 3 years later still has not been updated). There’s no indication when another book will be out, or IF another book will be out. The mother is half of the duo seems to be the main writer and has started multiple series…and then seems to drop them. She hasn’t published anything since 2016, by the looks of it. If it weren’t for the fact the official Facebook page was updated, I would have guessed she was dead. (Really. Most of her pages don’t look to have been updated in years.)
The fact that there doesn’t seem to be a lot going on with the series isn’t encouraging. Again, I found those books in 2020 and there hadn’t been a mention of a new one in four years, and now it’s three years later and it’s seven years without any indication from an official source regarding a new book.
But I enjoyed the series a lot. I love the mysteries, Jordan is a decent protagonist and I really like Vera. I know a couple of Veras in my own life. She’s grumpy but pretty great. She lives in a big, old Victorian house (which I would love to live in) and which Jordan recognizes is *definitely* one of the perks of her job. I definitely do not live in a big, old Victorian house, but it sounds like a dream, especially the big clawfoot soaking tub in Jordan’s bathroom!
I’m going to keep any eye out for more of this series, but I don’t have high hopes. Fingers crossed, though!
Category Archives: crime novel
2020: Victoria Abbott
Black Coffee
Agatha Christie’s Black Coffee was her first play and launched her another part of her writing career as a playwright. The premise of the story is that a scientist discovers a secret formula he was working on for explosives has been stolen. He calls in Hercule Poirot, but as Poirot, his friend and sidekick Captain Hastings, and Inspector Japp arrive, the scientist is murdered.
The play was, with the consent of the Christie estate, turned into a novel in 1998 by Charles Osborne (a writer and a classical music composer and critic). This is the version I listened to in 2020 (and the first of several Christie mysteries I read in 2020). I enjoyed this story very much, in spite of the fact that Christie didn’t actually write it in its novel form. It was more or less a locked room mystery and those are some of my favorites, plus, I enjoy Hercule Poirot a lot. I learned another fun poison, and of course read all about it.
When I saw this was the adaptation of a play I wasn’t sure what to expect. I would assume that it would be easier to go from a play to a novel under the premise that adding is easier than subtracting, but I don’t rightly know. That said, Christie always created an atmosphere that I enjoyed and wasn’t sure Osborne would be able to duplicate it, but he did a good job. I enjoyed the story tremendously and I even thought I’d solved it! But I got it wrong, haha.
It wasn’t my favorite Christie mystery but it was very enjoyable and I hope to see the stage play some day.
The Girl Who Lived Twice
The Girl Who Lived Twice is the sixth book in the Millennium saga, originally started by Stieg Larsson and continued by David Lagercrantz. This was the last book by Lagercrantz.
In some ways this book picks up where the last one left off, with Lisbeth Salander looking to find her twin sister, Camilla, who is the head of an international crime syndicate. Mikael Blomkvist is once again in a creative slump because nothing interesting is happening – until a man turns up dead under suspicious circumstances with Blomkvist’s phone number in his pocket.
With Salander’s help, as well as another the help of another journalist named Catrin Lindas, Blomkvist begins to unravel the tangled nest of wires that connects an Everest guide to the Swedish Minister of Defense, and Salander continues to chase her sister, first to Russia and then back to Sweden, ultimately cornering Camilla when Camilla goes after Blomkvist.
I can’t say I didn’t enjoy this book – it was decent enough and I liked it. Salander and Blomkvist are still a dynamic pair and Salander is still fascinating, but the stories themselves are becoming less compelling with time. I loved The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo when I first read it back in 2012(ish). Since then, the stories have gone downhill. I couldn’t say why. There was less violence in this book than the previous couple, but that is not a sticking point for me. I disliked how gory the books had become. Maybe I just don’t like Lagercrantz’s stories as much as Larsson’s. Either way, when I read/listened to this book, I was pretty glad that this was the end of the series. At the time, it was the end of the series.
But the publishing company has contracted another trilogy with Swedish writer Karin Smirnoff. The Girl in the Eagle’s Talons will be released in the English translation on August 29, 2023. I am, of course, going to read/listen to it. Hopefully, Smirnoff will be able to capture some of Larsson’s original magic.
The Outsider
I was always going to read/listen to The Outsider. It was released in 2018, and I listened to it in 2020 during Covid, of course, but I had been on the waiting list at the library for much longer – I think three or four months. Anyway, I was always going to read The Outsider because Stephen King wrote the novel around Holly Gibney, probably my favorite of his female characters to date, and maybe favorite overall.
Holly is hired when what seems to be an open and shut case begins to get out of control. The raped and mutilated body of Frankie Peterson is found, and all signs point to Terry Maitland, a teacher and local Little League coach. Maitland claims innocence, as he was at a conference with other teachers at the time of the murder, but they find his fingerprints and DNA at the crime scene – however, they also find video of him and his fingerprints at the site of the conference, with the other teachers confirming his nearly constant presence.
Maitland is eventually murdered by Ollie Peterson, Frankie’s brother, who blames Maitland for his brother’s death and his mother’s resulting fatal heart attack. Ollie is shot and killed by police. Ralph Anderson, who ordered the public arrest of Maitland and blamed for the ensuing publicity circus, is put on leave. With his dying breaths, Maitland continues to insist he’s innocent.
Holly, who has become a private investigator since we last saw her in End of Watch, takes the case when she’s approached by the investigator hired by Maitland’s attorney. Things proceed from there, with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous Sherlock Holmes quote driving the story: Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. The premise of the story is that a guy was in two places at once, and Holly knows that cannot be the case.
I enjoyed this book a lot although I saw some mixed reviews of it when I googled it briefly to refresh myself of some of the character names (I couldn’t remember Terry’s last name to save my life three years later). Once again, Stephen King sucked me into a story *so* fast. It took one chapter or less. His gift for this, at least in my case, is something I can only dream of.
I love that Holly has opened a detective agency. I love Holly. She is just as adorably quirky in this book and I found her just as endearing.
Of note: HBO made this novel into a show and I hated it because they ruined Holly. I remember seeing a lot of criticism at the time that people who disliked the TV version of Holly was because she was black and eyeroll. It wasn’t that she was black. It was that they took away all her charming quirks and just left her as someone who was socially awkward. I love that she’s a movie buff and that she bites her nails obsessively and that she’s very sweet and loyal once you get to know her. None of what made her wonderful came through in the adaptation. I was super glad when HBO decided not to pick up season 02.
Better Holly news! Stephen King is publishing another novel focused around Holly later this year, and I’m so excited that I’m tempted to preorder it.
The Art of the English Murder
Lucy Worsley’s The Art of the English Murder is a non-fiction book that follows the history of British crime as entertainment – from true stories, such as that of the Ratcliff Highway Murders and the infamous Jack the Ripper, to fictional murderers and their detectives, from Sherlock Holmes to Hercule Poirot and beyond.
The British public’s fascination with real crime led to the creation of the crime fiction genre, inspiring novels, plays, short stories, art, films, and various other mediums. Worsley’s engaging, witty text takes us through from the early nineteenth century through to the mid-late twentieth.
It’s interesting, as Worsley points out, that after a long hard day at work, toiling in the mines, or the fields, or behind a desk, a person comes home and flips on the television or opens a book and participates as an audience member in a good murder. They turn to grisly death for relaxation, and if you think about it, it’s quite bizarre.
Anyway, I really enjoyed this book. It was a quick, interesting look at one of the main forms of entertainment for the last hundred and fifty or so years. I especially like the second half of the book, focused on the detectives of these stories.
The one thing about the book I found a little disruptive was the tendency of Worsley to jump around, however, I learned later that this book actually accompanies a television series, which explains a lot of this, as the best way to tell a story on TV and in a book aren’t always the same. Either way, I recommend this little piece of history academia, and highly recommend it, especially if you enjoy murder mysteries, the way I do.
Lethal White
Lethal White is the fourth Cormoran Strike novel. As usual, I enjoyed it.
As usual, the main narrative of the novel is a murder investigation, this one triggered by a young man with a mental illness who believes he may have witnessed a child’s murder and burial in the woods near his home some years before the start of the novel.
The case leads to the Minister of Culture, Jasper Chiswell, and the investigation into his son Freddie’s death in Afghanistan, as well as the rest of his family and some left wing environmental activists.
This book also features art, which I am on and off randomly obsessed with.
I enjoyed Lethal White. I thought the motive was excellent and the story was well written.
My favorite part of the series continues to be Robin. She’s smart, determined, quite a bit ballsy, and I admire her struggle with PTSD because 1) it’s hard and 2) she does a lot of things I feel like I would do if I had PTSD. But anyway, I like everything about her except her sticking by her unsupportive boyfriend/fiancé/husband even though he’s a selfish cow. BUT THAT WAS FINALLY REMEDIED IN THIS BOOK. SHE FINALLY DUMPS HIM.
This is clearly setting up Robin and Strike as…endgame? Not 100% sure about that and not 100% certain how I feel about it, but honestly it doesn’t matter because OMG SHE DUMPED MATTHEW AND THANK GOD BECAUSE HE WAS AWFUL.
I don’t want to spoil too much of the case. I enjoy the cases in these stories because I find them interesting and difficult to work out (I don’t enjoy stories where I work out the end too much, makes me feel like I wasted my time). So I’ll cut this off here. BUT ROBIN DUMPED MATTHEW. YAY.
This Body’s Not Big Enough For The Both Of Us
So, I’m pretty sure Edgar Cantero is a magician, because there is no way this story should have worked.
The offices of A. Kimrean and Z. Kimrean have one desk. One chair. One phone. A. Kimrean and Z. Kimrean share an office. They share a job. They share a body.
Twins who are ultimately half of a truly functional person – he’s logical, she’s creative, he’s ordered, she’s wild – they work as “Private Eyes” out of a dingy office by Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, and have engaged in a battle for dominance since they were in utero.
A.Z. Kimrean infiltrate the inner circle of a California drug lord to discover who is murdering his sons one by one, and Cantero, with acerbic wit and clever writing, turns every noir and PI trope on its ear. This book is a witty, funny, biting, gender bending adventure about family, embracing being the hero of your own story, and basically being a fucking weirdo.
How the twins function doesn’t really matter. Their psych doctor (who is also like a mom to them) calls them chimeric twins. Adrian is the twin everyone wants on the case, Zooey not so much. Zooey is also a bit of a nymphomaniac and the twins are a hermaphrodite.
As I said, nothing about this story should have worked, and yet, the book was very enjoyable. It was funny, interesting, and incredibly fresh. As someone fairly familiar with the detective genre, it was pretty cool to watch this book subvert it at every turn.
This Body’s Not Big Enough For The Both Of Us is another Edgar Cantero book, so it’s probably not for everyone, but I enjoy Edgar Cantero, and I’m highly recommending it.
2018: The Year of Stephen King (Part II)
Because Stephen King’s Dark Tower audiobooks are popular at the library, I couldn’t just listen to them all in a row. I had to wait in between and listened to more of his books in the meantime. The other Stephen King books I completed last year were:
Doctor Sleep
Gwendy’s Button Box (co-written with Richard Chizmar)
Mr. Mercedes
Finders Keepers
End of Watch
Salem’s Lot
Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, and End of Watch were a series of detective novels featuring retired detective Bill Hodges and his nemesis Brady Hartsfield. I don’t know if I loved the supernatural-ish twist the series took, but overall I really enjoyed it, especially because Hodges’s side kick characters, Jerome Robinson and Holly Gibney.
Holly might be the best female character King has written. She is neurotic, socially inept, and has a ton of anxieties, but she is brilliant, loyal, funny, and infinitely capable. I loved loved loved her, and she appears in The Outsider (which I haven’t read yet), and is apparently getting her own book next year. I am so excited.
Gwendy’s Button Box was a novella set in Castle Rock, Maine, where 12 year old Gwendy meets a stranger in dark clothes who invites her to “palaver” (hello, reference to The Dark Tower series) and gives her a box with – you guessed it! – buttons. This was a novella, mostly about personal choices. It was ok. I didn’t love it as much as other books by King this year.
Doctor Sleep was a sequel to The Shining, which follows once cute 5 year old Danny Torrence into his alcoholic adulthood. Alcoholic Dan is way less adorable but he does pull it together to help Abra, a girl with “the shine,” who is being hunted by the cult True Knot. I liked Doctor Sleep, but for some reason felt it was missing something. Can’t quite figure out what it was.
Salem’s Lot is the story of a man named Ben Mears, who returns to his childhood town to discover it’s being taken over by vampires. I watched the TNT miniseries starring Rob Lowe in 2004 but never got around to reading the book. This was one of the books I listened to last summer at the gym (I spent A LOT of time at the gym last summer). I really liked this one. It’s one of King’s earliest books and easily one of his most famous and beloved. I liked a lot of the vampire lore that King built on (again, this was a Dracula year) and I liked the ending immensely. I decided to listen to the whole story because Father Callahan appeared in the The Dark Tower novels.
So that was my year with Stephen King. I plan to continue with his stuff. King can suck me into just about any story within a few pages, which is a talent beyond measure. How many books do I start and then drop because they just aren’t interesting? Quite a few, but none of Stephen King’s books, that’s for sure.
words in scarlet ink 