‘Jewish Noir’ Edited by Kenneth Wishnia

Published by PM Press,
1 October 2015.
ISBN: 978-1-62963-111-0

This collection of thirty-three stories is well up to the standard set by the excellent noir series. It begins with a fascinating introduction by Wishnia, in which he tries to analyse what being Jewish means: a people whose name, Hebrew, comes from the word ebra meaning ‘to cross over’, or whose Egyptian glyph denotes ‘a people without a place’; a people whose religious books include the individual fighting against society; a people whose elders were lost in the Holocaust, and whose grandmothers still keep a bag packed, just in case they have to flee the next pogrom.

The book is divided into seven sections. All the stories were good, so I’ve picked out particular favourites to comment on. The first section, Bitter Herbs focuses on individuals caught up in the machinery of the modern world, and my favourite here was ‘Living Water’, B K Stevens’ wonderful satire on modern school assessment (there is a writer who’s suffered too many touchy-feely powerpoints). The satire was spot-on, and the ending totally unexpected. The Golden Land looks at the difficulties in assimilation into a new culture, and the stand-out for me here was ‘The Lost Pages of the books of Judith’, Kenneth Wishnia’s tale of young college boys fighting prejudice in the late 40s – a prejudice that cropped up horrifyingly often in other stories from the land of freedom and equal opportunities.  Night and Fog looked at the noir motif of a cause doomed from the beginning, and my favourite here was Melissa Yi’s haunting Blood Diamonds, which traces the legacy of the Holocaust through three generations. The longer section L’dor v’dor (from generation to generation) looks at the noir motif of mortality and the passing of time; I particularly enjoyed Stephen Jay Schwartz’s gentle ‘Yahrzeit Candle’ which dealt with heart disease passing through a family, and the tough voice of Alan Orloff’s ‘One of Them’.   Suburban Sprawl opened with a wonderful monologue by Rabbi Adam D Fischer, parodying a mother’s talk about her daughter’s Bat Mitzvah, and continued with several tales of bullying.  Kaffee mit Schlock went for the ‘adrenaline-fueled gut punch of hardboiled pulp fiction’; I enjoyed the sting-in-the-tail story of a nurse and her patient, ‘Doc’s Oscar’ by Eddie Muller. The final section was Vintage Reprint, with an essay and short story from the 60s by Harlan Ellison, of a famous comedian returning to the small town that mistreated him as a child.

A wonderful collection of short stories with the bleakest, blackest of noir feel about them all. Highly recommended.

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Reviewer: Marsali Taylor

 Kenneth Wishnia was born in Hanover, NH  to a roving band of traveling academics. He earned a B.A. from Brown University (1982) and a Ph.D. in comparative literature from SUNY Stony Brook (1996). He teaches writing, literature and other deviant forms of thought at Suffolk Community College in Brentwood, Long Island, where he is a professor of English.
Ken’s novels have been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony, and Macavity Awards, and have made Best Mystery of the Year lists at Booklist, Library Journal, and The Washington Post. His short stories have appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Murder in Vegas, Long Island Noir, Queens Noir, Politics Noir, Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail, and elsewhere.

kennethwishnia.com/

Marsali Taylor grew up near Edinburgh, and came to Shetland as a newly-qualified teacher. She is currently a part-time teacher on Shetland's scenic west side, living with her husband and two Shetland ponies. Marsali is a qualified STGA tourist-guide who is fascinated by history, and has published plays in Shetland's distinctive dialect, as well as a history of women's suffrage in Shetland. She's also a keen sailor who enjoys exploring in her own 8m yacht, and an active member of her local drama group.  Marsali also does a regular monthly column for the Mystery People e-zine.

‘Suspicion at Seven’ by Ann Purser

Published by Berkley Prime Crime,
3 December 2015.
ISBN: 978 0 425 26179 8 (PB)

I’m often amazed to discover how dangerous it is to live in a small rural village in England; they can’t possibly be the comfortable, easy-going places which the term ‘cosy crime’ implies, since murder seems to happen on a regular basis in the most idyllic location.

Fortunately there is usually a feisty lady of a certain age on hand to delve into the mystery and discover whodunit, often ahead of the police and sometimes with the help of a friendly detective who has no qualms about bypassing the rules and involving a member of the public who was probably a useful witness if not actually a suspect.

So it is with Ann Purser’s series set in and around the village of Long Farnden and featuring Lois Meade and her idiosyncratic family and friends. Suspicion at Seven is the latest adventure which brings Lois together with semi-retired detective Hunter Cowgill, whose courtly advances she has been fending off since book one.

Suspicion at Seven involves a shady jewellery salesman with an eye for the ladies, a couple of local organized crime gangs and a village bakery. First up a body is discovered in a bedroom at an upmarket hotel; then the chief suspect is found, rather gruesomely, apparently drowned, and sprawled across a mill wheel.

And they call this cosy crime? 

I firmly believe that it’s the characters who keep readers coming back to a series, and Ann Purser has created a quirky, engaging bunch of them. There’s Lois’s family, especially Gran, who has a mind of her own and an enviable determination to use it, and doesn’t really approve of what she calls her daughter’s ‘ferretin’’. And not far in the background are the crew of cleaners Lois employs in her domestic help agency – especially Dot, who has connections in the dark underworld of village life.

Hunter Cowgill, resident cop, is as benign as he is perceptive, and no doubt fans of the series have long since forgiven his total disregard for aspects of police procedure such as recording interviews and not allowing important documents to leave the office.

One by one the suspects are eliminated, and eventually we are left with the only person who could possibly have committed either murder. By the end, Lois is half-resolved to give up ferretin’ - but my money is on another in the series before too long. 

Since the series seems to be aimed at an American audience, can I be the first to reassure readers that English villages aren’t really hotbeds of murder and gang violence? At least, I don’t think so...

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Reviewer: Lynne Patrick

Ann Purser lives in the East Midlands, in a small and attractive village which still has a village shop, a garage, pub and church. Here she finds her inspiration for her novels about country life. She has only to do her daily shopping down the High Street to listen to the real life of the village going on around her. Before turning to fiction, she had a number of different careers, including journalism – she was for six years a columnist in SHE magazine – and art gallery proprietor. Running her own gallery in a 400-year-old barn behind the house, she gained fascinating insights into the characters and relationships of customers wandering around. She had no compunction about eavesdropping, and sharpened up her writer’s skills in weaving plots around strangers who spent sometimes more than an hour in her gallery. Working in a village school added more grist to the mill, as does singing in the church choir and membership of the Women’s Guild. She reminds herself humbly that Virginia Woolf was President of her local WI…
Six years hard study won her an Open University degree. , During this period, she wrote two non-fiction books, one for parents of handicapped children (she has a daughter with cerebral palsy) and the other a lighthearted book for schools, on the explosion of popular entertainment in the first forty years of the twentieth century.
Round Ringford became Ann’s village in a series of six novels, each with a separate story, but featuring the same cast of characters with a few newcomers each time, Next: the Lois Meade Mysteries, each title reflecting a day of the week. Ann has always loved detective fiction, and determined to make it her next series. So Murder on Monday was born, followed by Terror on Tuesday, and Weeping on Wednesday. The rest of the week follows!
Mornings are set aside for writing, and the rest of the day Ann spends walking the dog, retrieving bantams’ eggs from around the garden, gossiping and taking part in the life of the village.

http://www.annpurser.com

Lynne Patrick has been a writer ever since she could pick up a pen, and has enjoyed success with short stories, reviews and feature journalism, but never, alas, with a novel. She crossed to the dark side to become a publisher for a few years, and is proud to have launched several careers which are now burgeoning. She lives on the edge of rural Derbyshire in a house groaning with books, about half of them crime fiction.

‘Into the Dark’ by Alison Gaylin

Published by Sphere,
3 December 2015. 
ISBN: 978 0 7515 5374 1 (PB)

Imagine if you had the kind of memory which gave you instant, detailed recall of any incident in your adult life, in acute sensory detail. Pretty useful, especially if you were a private investigator.

Now imagine you had that memory – but no control over when the recall would happen or what would trigger it. Not so useful, especially if it blanked out the here and now when you were in the middle of something important.

Brenna Spector has this condition – it’s called hyperthymestic syndrome, and is regarded as a neurological disorder rather than a useful talent. Sometimes it really is useful; Brenna never forgets a phone number or a car registration. But when her memory ambushes her, it’s more inconvenience than gift; it makes driving dangerous, plays havoc with relationships and gets in the way of anything resembling ordinary life. 

In Into the Dark, Brenna’s own past moves centre stage when she is asked by an old employer to help trace a young woman with a high-profile online persona whose true identity is a mystery, but who appears to have intimate knowledge of things to which only Brenna herself and her sister, missing for decades, should be party.

It proves to be a dangerous quest, for Brenna herself and for others, including Trent, her streetwise but oddly naive sidekick who happens to be a computer genius. Carjacking, drugs and attempted kidnapping all play a part, and Brenna’s instant recall proves both blessing and curse as she attempts to track down the mysterious Lula Belle.

Gaylin weaves Brenna’s memories deftly into the present-day narrative, along with a personal life which includes Maya her teenage daughter, Jim her ex-husband and Faith his new wife, and Nick Morasco, an unusually sensitive detective to whom she is (mutually) attracted.

A retired gangster, a plucky old lady and a bewildered Hollywood talent agent join the cast as the story progresses, and the bad guys include Diandra, a stunningly beautiful starlet on a mission. Which just goes to show, in crime fiction you can never judge by appearances.

Brenna Spector is one of the more interesting series protagonists to come my way in recent months. I recommend starting with the previous episode, And She Was, which sets the scene in more detail – but whatever you do, don’t miss this one.

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Reviewer: Lynne Patrick

Alison Gaylin's debut book was nominated for an Edgar Award in the Best First Novel category. A graduate of Northwestern University and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, Alison lives with her husband and daughter in upstate New York.

www.alisongaylin.com

Lynne Patrick has been a writer ever since she could pick up a pen, and has enjoyed success with short stories, reviews and feature journalism, but never, alas, with a novel. She crossed to the dark side to become a publisher for a few years, and is proud to have launched several careers which are now burgeoning. She lives on the edge of rural Derbyshire in a house groaning with books, about half of them crime fiction.