Chanticleer Book Reviews

Tag: M & M

  • FAIRFIELD’S AUCTION: A Witherston Mystery by Betty Jean Craige – Animal Cozies, Women Sleuths, Cozy Mystery novels

    FAIRFIELD’S AUCTION: A Witherston Mystery by Betty Jean Craige – Animal Cozies, Women Sleuths, Cozy Mystery novels

    There is a point in time when what is done cannot be undone. That’s a tough lesson to learn for the attendees at Fairfield’s Auction. Most of them are residents of Witherston, a rural town in Georgia. The items up for auction represent the history of a divided community. After all, what is the community? Is it property to be bought and sold and owned, as the white settlers viewed it? Or is it land not to be divided but shared as the original Cherokees believed? And the historic items that are on display to be auctioned, is it right that the tomahawks and Cherokee blowguns stolen from the tribes be sold at high prices by the settlers’ descendants? Who really owns the history that is on sale? And is ownership worth killing for? Disagreement can lead to murder.

    Mr. Hempton Fairfield is an antique dealer of Cherokee artifacts. His auction is enthusiastically attended. As the character, Neel points out, “ ’Lots of people like history . . . We want to know our ethnic and cultural roots.’” But not everyone supports this sale of historic items. There are protestors with signs saying the Cherokees were robbed. Tension is high as the bidding proceeds. The final surprise for sale is an African Grey parrot. Outrage ignites again. Residents are appalled to see for sale an apparently abused, talking, living animal being. Charlotte Byrd is herself determined to save this bird named Doolittle, and take the saucy animal home with her.

    After the auction, the police are kept busy as threats are made and then bodies begin to turn up in the town. Who could be the killer in their midst? There are ominous text messages to investigate a suspenseful hunt to match specific Cherokee artifacts to descendants’ families, and what follows is one wild. It seems that no one knows anything, and no one is talking, except the African Grey Parrot. With the abuse that bird has seen, those comments are certainly alarming. Charlotte’s family and friends are tenderly training Doolittle to see a bright future for himself. And then there are the chickens. Lots of chickens. Everywhere. This mystery is filled with humor and passion, and an urgency to bring the killer to justice before another person, or animal, is murdered.

    Craige challenges her readers to track physical clues, to follow tech clues through texts and blogs, and also to re-examine preconceptions and perspectives. It’s a soulful glimpse into a time and history of rural Georgia, and how the deeds of yesteryear impact the populations of today. History cannot be undone. It’s what you do with today that will create tomorrow’s history. How will you affect your descendants? That is the question that Witherston will face.

    Fairfield’s Auction: A Witherston Mystery won First Place in the CIBA 2017 M&M Awards for Mystery novels.

     

     

  • A PROFESSOR and MRS. MORIARTY MYSTERY: Moriarty Takes His Medicine, Book 2 by Anna Castle – Historical Mystery

    A PROFESSOR and MRS. MORIARTY MYSTERY: Moriarty Takes His Medicine, Book 2 by Anna Castle – Historical Mystery

    In Anna Castle’s British historical, cozy mystery novel, Moriarty Takes His Medicine, we find James Moriarty and his new bride, Angeline, struggling with their exciting, new relationship once the dust settles, so to speak.

    James Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes’s nemesis, is a man who cares deeply for his wife, so much so, that he is driven to distraction and embraces the help of his former foe as an ally to help rescue Angelina from grave danger.

    Sound like a melodrama? It is. Melodrama at it’s best, with strong women characters from the 1880s in several roles, providing a 2020 twist to the male-dominated period. That being said, Castle is no slouch when it comes to providing accurate historical details. She’s done her research and offers it up in an engaging and entertaining novel. The health spas and health tonics of the time provides an impressive backdrop to the mystery she develops, as Sherlock Holmes comes to Moriarty for help on a curious case, the death of a beloved aunt whose nephew suspects foul play. Together Moriarty and Holmes uncover a plot of devious mischief by medical professionals at a high-end spa/hospital where several elderly women and wealthy wives have stayed, only to die unexpectedly at home. Castle begins with the death of one woman.

    Moriarty, Holmes, and Watson find that many of the women’s deaths went unchallenged because they all died at home after their stay, pointing to their own negligence and not that of the hospital, a devious plan, to say the least. Dr. Watson plays a small but crucial role at the beginning of their investigation as he uncovers the meaning behind “the Clennam treatment,” referring to a character from Little Dorritt, a Charles Dickens novel. And so, as Holmes is want to say, the game’s afoot.

    Angelina’s past as a performer, a vocation she sorely misses, provides her with a means to help when she realizes her sister is being sent to the notorious spa for “the Clennam” treatment, code for “kill her.” Angelina takes on the most dangerous role of her life when she finds herself under the “Clennam” treatment.

    Castle introduces the tonic as one in a series of archaic and debunked methods of treatment. She also explores aspects of electric shock therapy, and “the rest cure,” a popular method of treating a nervous and perhaps unruly woman to a treatment that did nothing to cure the root cause of their ailments. Alas, at that time, the men knew best even when they were wrong.

    Castle turns this male-dominated society on its head. Women display their strength and ability to problem solve as they help to resolve this crime, and they do it with the full support of their men. A very satisfying twist on the social norms of the time, which brings us to a satisfactory conclusion.

    In the end, we have something akin to a Shakespeare “comedy,” all the “good” characters live, all the lovers end up happily together, and all the villains fail and are doomed to suffer.

    As the second novel in a series, this book could stand-alone. This romp through the beloved world of Sherlock Holmes will surprise you at every turn and please Sherlockians as well as lovers of British cozy mystery fans.

    Moriarty Takes His Medicine won First Place in the 2018 CIBAs for Mystery and Mayhem.