Weekly Reader: Murder in Myrtle Bay (Ruth Finlay Mysteries Book 1) by Isobel Blackthorn; Secrets, Affairs, Lies, and Murder Surround a Small Town

 

Weekly Reader: Murder in Myrtle Bay (Ruth Finlay Mysteries Book 1) by Isobel Blackthorn; Secrets, Affairs, Lies, and Murder Surround a Small Town 

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: We spent some time in the Atlantic exploring the history, current events, and legends of the Caribbean. Where to next? Why explore the danger and violence found in the Pacific Ocean of course. We saw a bit of the Pacific in Adrian Deans' Asparagus Grass beginning in New South Wales Australia but mostly it was the start of an around the world and into the stars trip.

This and the next book that I am going to review are murder mysteries set in the Pacific Islands of Australia and Hawaii respectively with the locals at their best and worst.

Cozy Mysteries usually show the best of small towns with friendly helpful residents, cute shop names, and, okay there's murder going on but there are many who want to solve it with the help of many eccentric families.

What makes Isobel Blackthorn's Murder in Myrtle Bay Ruth Finlay Mysteries Book 1 stand out is while it shows that charm and eccentricities of small town life, it isn't afraid to show these towns at their worst: the judgemental attitudes, the years long feuds, the clannish snobbishness when someone new comes along, the socioeconomic and sometimes racial divides that puts certain people in specific categories, and of course the strong emotions which result in violence and murder.

Friends, Ruth Finlay, and Doris Cleaver, are visiting the Factory, a now closed factory which has become an antiques and collectibles market. The duo find the dying David Fisk, who looks like he was hit on the back of his head and insisted that "he didn't do it" before expiring. This leaves Ruth and Doris with many questions. Who attacked David? What didn't he do? Who would dare attack him in broad daylight in an open market? How did they manage without anyone noticing? Ruth and Doris saw many friends and acquaintances that day, so which one is guilty?

Murder in Myrtle Bay is in many ways a typical cozy mystery with the usual tropes: murder in a small town, a victim with plenty of enemies and few friends, and an interesting detective, or in this case detectives, that takes their Reader through the mystery. That doesn't make Murder in Myrtle Bay, a lousy book. In fact, it's a lot of fun. It's the type of book that you want to read on the beach or on a warm summer night with a cold drink in hand.

Part of what makes this book are the lead characters themselves. Ruth and Doris are a fun fascinating duo who stand out as they try to solve the mystery of who killed David Fisk.

Ruth and Doris are an attraction of opposites. Ruth is a magazine writer in her 30's or 40's with an aging father. She grew up in Myrtle Bay, at least since high school, but she is something of an outsider, partly because of her standoffish personality and occupation as a journalist. This murder investigation also involves her asking a lot of personal questions to people that she has known for a long time making her even less liked. This scrutiny often makes her self conscious and overly serious at times.

While Ruth feels like a self conscious outsider, Doris knows she is an outsider and doesn't care. In fact, she dramatizes it. A senior, Doris dresses flamboyantly and can be very outspoken. Doris is also quite a gossip and knows the family histories in town and is even related to some of the noted families. She gives Ruth some much needed background information over who feuded with whom and who cheated on whom. Doris makes a strong presence whether it's getting a local to do some landscaping or to admit previous affairs with other women. While Ruth shies away from people, Doris is up front and center.

The mystery that Ruth and Doris find themselves in is pretty solid especially since it happened in open public and both admit that they saw friends and acquaintances coming in and out of The Factory meaning the murderer is more than likely someone that they know. 

Among the difficulties of living in a small town is that almost claustrophobic feeling of everyone knowing everybody. You go to a store and you see regular staff members or customers. You might see old school friends. Old friendships might be rekindled but also old grudges, rivalries, and fights may resurface. It's hard to live in the moment when there is someone always reminding you of your past.

Another aspect that Blackthorn's writing opens is the sharp lines that are often drawn among people in such towns. As Doris reminds Ruth of the different family rivalries and love triangles, it's clear that the two women are surrounded by a hierarchy and system where some people are on top and some are on the bottom. While that's true in most places, that's usually an abstract. In small towns, the people on top are known, usually families with a lot of wealth and connections. If not families, then institutions like the local churches or associations that shape the towns in their own images. If you are considered the wrong income bracket, live on the wrong side of town, the wrong skin color, the wrong religion, the wrong sexuality or gender identity, or become a subject of scandal, you could be made a pariah.

This claustrophobia and hierarchy is what Ruth and Doris have to muddle through as they get to the truth. There are many people, especially from certain families, that want to keep their image and reputation intact and won't let something like a dead body and a murder investigation get in the way of that. 

Murder in Myrtle Bay is a reminder that just because an area is rural doesn't mean that it isn't filled with hatred, prejudices, and violence. If anything, it's often worse than an urban landscape because Death could be wearing a familiar and even once friendly face.

New Book Alert: Lost to The Lake by Anna Willett; Psychological Thriller Peers At The Paranoia of a Fractured Marriage

 New Book Alert: Lost to The Lake by Anna Willett; Psychological Thriller Peers At The Paranoia of a Fractured Marriage

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews 

Spoilers: Anna Willet's The Family Man focused on a police officer investigating a snuff film created by a man living the guise of a decent family man and moral center of the community. It offers an outsider peering into that facade and exposing the dark truth underneath.

Her novel, Lost to the Lake, shows the insider perspective of what it is like to live in a family like that. It shows what happens during a chilling vacation when a married couple discovers that their spouses aren't all that they appeared to be. They are married to complete terrifying strangers who wear familiar faces.

Marty and Beth seem to have a perfect life together. He owns a thriving business in financial planning. They have a nice home and though childless, they have a loyal dog, Angel whom Beth loves and does upon. Everything seems okay until the night when two men break into their home and hold the couple hostage. Marty apparently "took something from (them)" and now they are here for payback.

The opening is very tense as the two struggle in the dark against their assailants. This also begins to open some subtle cracks in their marriage as Beth begins to see Marry, a man that usually takes charge and can be dependable, as a coward who may abandon her if given the chance and has certainly been keeping secrets from her.

The results are a seriously injured dog who needs veterinary attention and at least one of the intruders dead on the floor. Beth wants to call the police, but Marty refuses since Angel more than likely attacked the man in defense of his humans. Marty says that he is an innocent pawn and didn't know these men were criminals when he did business with him. He could be considered an accomplice

This could be enough evidence to have Marry arrested and Angel put down. The best thing then, Marty suggests, would be to bury the body and get out of town for awhile. Why he even booked a room at the White Mist Lake Retreat while Beth took Angel to the vet ("It will be like couple's therapy," Marty insists, after they drag the dead body into the trunk.) As for the other guy, well he ran off and as long as he doesn't know where they are going, he'll be out of sight and out of mind.

I have read many thrillers and mysteries set in Australia but none have taken advantage of the setting more than Willett has in Lost to the Lake. The White Mist Lake Retreat is one of those places in the middle of nowhere where you could just sense something sinister lurking behind every tree or in every cabin. It's perfect for a thriller or horror.

If your imagination and paranoia doesn't get you, nature will. Remember, this is set in the Australian Outback where there is a lot of land to bury somebody and you can be miles away from anyone who would take a glance. 

The Retreat being in this rural out of the way place and near a dark forbidding lake gives the novel a strong sense of abandonment. You could be left there and no one would find you for weeks, if they found you at all. 

This sense of abandonment carries over from the setting into Beth and Marty's marriage. As the book continues, Beth begins to see another side to Marty, one that up until now she tolerated. He is snappish, irritable, distant, and suspicious of her friendship with Craig, White Mist Lake's maintenance man. Marty tells lies on top of lies about the night of the break in and his actions afterwards to the point where Beth doesn't know if she can trust him.

It doesn't take long for Beth to review the early times of their marriage and realize that what she once thought of as protective is now controlling. 

When Marty was once daring and passionate, she now sees him as temperamental and abusive. What she saw as an intellectual analytical mind is now cold-blooded and arrogant. It takes the break in and their "vacation" for Beth to realize that she had been in an abusive relationship all along and never acknowledged it until now. Beth is not just in a state of physical abandonment from the setting around her but emotional abandonment from the one person that she thought that she could trust.

Lost to the Lake ironically gets lost towards the end after revelations are made and characters double and triple cross each other. The endings go on and on and perhaps a few chapters could be trimmed. This isn't a book that is strong on reveal and resolution, so much as it's strong on atmosphere and dissecting the marriage between the two main characters. 

Weekly Reader: The Colours of Death: Sgt. Thomas' Casebook by Robert New; Mystery Anthology Is Bright With Color Theme

 

Weekly Reader: The Colours of Death: Sgt. Thomas' Casebook by Robert New; Mystery Anthology Is Bright With Color Theme

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews 

Spoilers: The color of death might be black as the symbolic color of mourning like seen on the robes of the Grim Reaper. It might be red, the color of blood when it comes outside of a body. In some cultures, the traditional color of mourning is white. However, according to Robert New's The Colours of Death: Sgt. Thomas' Casebook, death comes in a variety of colors.

Colours of Death is a suspenseful mystery anthology with an interesting premise: each short story takes the theme of a specific color. The colors in the title are revealed as a symptom of the murder (blue skin revealing that the victim has been poisoned as seen in "Blue: Blue Bloods" ) or a specific trait about the murderer or victim in question. (One of the characters has flaming red, almost orange hair, in the short story, "Orange: The 11th Killer.") 

The stories fall into a mostly predictable pattern. A murder occurs somewhere in Perth, usually seen through the perspective of the potential victim or one of the eyewitnesses. Something odd happens or some unidentified character with a unique trait appears to make what the character sees even more bizarre. Then Sgt. Brad Thomas and his colleagues are called in to investigate the crime. The color element is introduced during the investigation describing either the cause of death or the victim or killer's appearance. Thomas interviews suspects and searches the scene of the crime to gather evidence and find probable solutions. He also discusses the case with others including his mentor, Prof. Engels, forensic pathologist, Sally Summers, and his fiancee, Amy Stevenson. Thomas uses his deductive skills or intuitive reasoning to come up with a Eureka moment, connected to the color. He discovers the killers' identity and gets them to confess in a final interview. Thomas is then left contemplating his dangerous career and upcoming marriage to Amy.

While the stories are formulaic by nature, the colors are made to explore all of the interesting ways and possibilities in which a murder can occur. New does a brilliant job of making each story unique in execution, connecting the story with the rest of the anthology, and also allowing the story to stand on its own as an interesting case in its own right.

The stories run an interesting gambit of murderous possibilities. In "Black: Black Death," Thomas investigates the murder of Johnny Smyth, a man who had his bones broken, organs damaged, and had been beaten so much that the bruises on his skin appeared black. ("It's like he was sandwiched between two trucks or fell from the sky from a parachute," Sally observes.) Thomas uses information that he gathered investigating images and memories from his own rural background to reason that Smyth had been killed and dropped into a mine that was owned by Athol "The Fugue" Fugate, a local crime boss posing as a legitimate businessman and reoccurring antagonist in Thomas' series. This is among the more gruesome cases, but it stands out because of the one on one struggle between the opposite sides of the law. Those sides are found in Thomas' Sherlock Holmes-like deductive reasoning and empathy towards the crime victims vs. Fugate's smooth ability to do away with his enemies and making his name known and feared by the general public while literally getting away with murder.

Thomas has a fascination with psychology and criminal profiling. That profiling comes into play in "Orange: The 11th Killer." Thomas engages in a conversation with Paul over an investigation in which 47 different hair samples are found around a series of dead bodies. Thomas reasons that the person is obsessed with hair. Perhaps he could be bald or has a unique hair color in which he was noticed or mocked for. (The orange in the title refers to hair color.) Thomas also notes that the killings occurred on the 11th of each month as an important date in the killer's life. Of course he is found to be right. There is almost something psychic about this approach to crime solving and the short length makes Thomas' observations a bit too quick and obvious. However, this story reveals how crime solvers get into the killers' minds to learn what they are obsessed with and what compels them to take such a dangerous path.

Another brilliant case is "Yellow: The Storyteller." Aaron Stevenson, Thomas' future brother in law, is contacted by a local serial killer known only as The Storyteller. In Jigsaw like fashion, the Storyteller kidnaps a family member of the chosen target and then calls them to tell them that they have exactly 45 minutes to solve three riddles or said family member would perish in a fire that the Storyteller would start. (Yellow as in flames. Thomas and co.'s only possibility is that the Storyteller is a firefighter because they know the exact time of fire progression.) During a tense three way conversation, Aaron,Thomas, and Engels reason their way through the riddles to save the life of Aaron's son, Jethro. The three men use their vast knowledge to determine the solutions. One example involves the clue "Franklin's 51st theft stole the credit for this." Instead of the more obvious choice of Benjamin Franklin, Engels comes up with the theory that the clue refers to Rosalind Franklin, whose photo fifty one revealed the helical structure of DNA and who was not given credit for the discovery until after her death. The story is almost a process of figuring out who is smarter: the criminal who gets people to play their games or the officers who are trying to end the game.

One of the more heartbreaking cases in the anthology is that in "Blue: Blue Bloods." A toxin is released during an awards ceremony at Sangre Azul School causing hundreds of deaths, most of them children. The blue in the title is a double meaning revealing the blue skin which is a symptom of the toxin and that the school's name is French for "blue blood." This is another case that is largely dependent on Thomas' rural background and knowledge of poisons, but what stands out is the emotional tone of this story. It is matter of fact but carries a sense of sadness about the realization that a whole school full of children, almost a generation, will never graduate and ascend to college, never be with their families, or never hang out with their friends, because of one person's hatred and vile actions. Hundreds of families are greatly affected by this tragedy including parents and siblings. The short story calls to mind real life mass murders such as the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in which the majority of the victims were children.

New captures the senses well with his writing. The colors themselves capture sight and the many of the murders affect the victim's senses of smell and taste. 'White: Sting'' is one that activates the sense of touch not only in the victim but subconsciously in the Reader. Sally investigates the body of Grant Dillon. The cause of death was a self inflicted gunshot to the head but what confuses Sally is the body's appearance. Why was Dillon hairless all over and why was his skin red raw as though it had been waxed several times? Why was their one folder in his medical cabinet marked "Pain" which contained several receipts for prescribed and over the counter pain medication and alternative treatments? Dillon was clearly under a lot of pain that may have resulted in his suicide but what?

After talking to his doctor, Sally learns that Dillon had been infected for a year because of the stings from the white hair of the Gympie Gympie Tree, native only to Queensland. The hairs of the tree can embed in the skin and cause unbearable pain that can last for up to two years. ("It's like being burnt with hot acid and electrocuted at the same time," Dillon's doctor states.) Someone clearly wanted Dillon to suffer. 

Readers with a low tolerance for pain or are extremely touch sensitive to rashes and bruises are advised to read only with plenty of aloe gel nearby to soothe the psychosomatic pain that will inflict in becoming too involved into this story.

Besides an interactive sensate experience thanks to New's description, the characterization in this story stand out. Both Dillon and the person who contributed to his death are written very sympathetically. Unlike many of the previous stories, there is a clear motive and understanding towards why someone would want to cause such suffering. 

Also Sally emerges as a real hero in this story. In most of the previous stories in this anthology, Sally's role is to be Thomas' sidekick just to provide forensic analysis and be amazed at Thomas' observations and solutions. This time Thomas is in the back seat, preparing for his wedding and giving only a few suggestions to propel her investigation in certain directions. Refreshingly, "White: Sting" gives Sally a chance to do some real legwork, interview suspects, and come up with a solution based on her own medical expertise.

The Colours of Death is an anthology that reveals that death cannot only wear many faces, but it can be many colors as well.