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The Body in the Bath
The Christmas season holds no joy for detective Helgi Reykdal. His girlfriend, Anita, the love of his life, was killed in a car “accident” a few short weeks back. The driver of the car: Helgi’s alcohol abusing and exceptionally jealous ex, Bergþora, who had been harassing Anita ever since Anita and Helgi became an item. Helgi knows beyond a trace of doubt that Anita’s death was first-degree murder, but Bergþora stuck to her story: “the visibility was terrible, she ran out in front of my car . . .” And in the end, Bergþora walked free. After an appropriate period of mourning, Helgi returns to work halfheartedly, resuming his earlier task of investigating the disappearance and presumed death of his immediate predecessor, Hulda Hermannsdottir. And then comes the shocker: Bergþora turns up dead in her bathtub, and Helgi finds himself the sole suspect for her murder. The Body in the Bath is the latest entry in author Ragnar Jonasson’s series following Helgi, and the ample backstory ensures this third mystery is eminently readable as a standalone. But I would recommend starting with the first two books, Death at the Sanatorium and The Mysterious Case of the Missing Crime Writer, as they add texture and nuance as well as end with some spectacular cliff-hangers. The Body in the Bath continues in that tradition . . .
A Warning to the Curious
The Dee and Lao mysteries by S.J. Rozan and John Shen Yen Nee offer up a Chinese twist to the Sherlock Holmes novels of yesteryear: University professor Lao She (the Doctor Watson analog) serves as narrator and unwitting foil for his Sherlock Holmes counterpart, Judge Dee Ren Jie, detective extraordinaire and master of disguise. The third book in the series, A Warning to the Curious, is set in 1924 London, where an emissary from the Chinese government has been sent to look into the death of Dee. This will prove to be a somewhat difficult task, as Dee is not dead. He is in hiding for the moment, awaiting his most dramatic Sherlockian moment to reappear. A supply of munitions meant for the Chinese government has gone missing, and this threatens to overturn the fragile balance of power among warring factions eager to exert dominance in postimperial China. Meanwhile, Lao continues his experiments with radiotelegraphy, the then-new technology that Thomas Edison hoped to one day use to communicate with those in the afterlife (and yes, there will be a séance, although it will go hilariously awry). The cast includes a prima ballerina, a young female Chinese aristocrat eager to embrace Western culture and abandon traditional Chinese culture, a handful of Russian warriors, a lethal band of ninjas and the usual plethora of side characters bearing names along the lines of former pickpocket Jimmy Fingers. Swashbuckling, humorous and historically and culturally accurate, A Warning to the Curious is an entertaining and worthy addition to the series.
The Heights
Ian Rankin’s The Heights introduces a new character, London-based Detective Sergeant Gillian Gish, who is about as different as humanly possible from Edinburgh detective John Rebus, about whom Rankin has written at great length. They do share one trait in common, however: a willingness to bend the rules in the service of justice. Gish is called upon to investigate the murder of an employee in a highly coveted high-rise. There are all sorts of unsavory (or at best semisavory) characters on hand who could fit the bill for perpetrator: the unscrupulous owner-in-name, who is beholden to the Russian mob for financing; various low-level thugs who are keeping close tabs on things for their billionaire bosses in Moscow; the androgynous pop star and his malicious manager; the London mob dude and his serially unfaithful wife. I am just scratching the surface here, by the way. As was the case with Rebus, our new protagonist has real-world issues to face in addition to her job: a mother with Alzheimer’s and a budding romance with a reporter that could cause a job-threatening conflict of interest, for starters. She has the makings of a series character, and nobody does series characters better than Ian Rankin.
★ Miss Wolcott’s Ghost
Louise Penny’s last two Inspector Gamache novels were decidedly international in scope, “ripped from the headlines,” as they used to say about the 1990s TV series Law & Order. Her latest, Miss Wolcott’s Ghost, is far more intimate and all the better for it, returning the storied inspector to his stomping grounds, the village of Three Pines, Quebec. When Gamache receives an indistinct middle-of-the-night phone call saying that there is a dead body in Lost Nation, he has no idea what it could possibly mean. After questioning longtime locals, Gamache learns that Lost Nation is a cemetery dating back more than 100 years, overgrown and deep in the forest. And there is indeed a dead body there, one that has been dead just for months, not decades. Never buried. Just lying on the ground, with plants growing up through the body. The autopsy determines that the person was beaten to death. The investigation leads to a 1967 oral history of the region by a local resident, conducted by a noted genealogist; inexplicably, those records have disappeared, and both genealogist and subject were killed in a car accident a day after the interview. Does that suggest a further pair of homicides? Dating back nearly 60 years? To say more would be to give away important plot points, and so I will leave you with just this: Miss Wolcott’s Ghost is the best of Penny’s always-great series thus far.