Murder on the Orient Express

Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie.

William Morrow: an imprint of Harper Collins Publishing. 266 pages.

He's the murderer.   

No! She's the murderer!

Wait! We can't rule out that suspect over there. . .

You've got it all wrong––

Clearly that suspect did it.

Okay, I confess - I DID IT!

The element of lingering doubt is what makes the most prolific author of crime fiction––as well as the most widely read––who she was. Elvis, Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday could really sing. Frank Sinatra was a legend. Babe Ruth could hit a little bit. Sometimes we must simply be appreciative of living in the time we do, and be blessed with the opportunity to see the masters of their craft;  or in this case, to read a masterpiece for ourselves. I had never read one of Agatha Christie’s books before this one. I am marginally better for having done so.

We have a stranded group of people. One of them tried to hire the lead character as he was well aware his number might be up. Nice try! Ticket punched, we now move from “Save me!” to “Find out who killed me!”

The fact of the matter is, the dearly departed may not be missed, much as that seems odd to write, much less say. He gave off quite the vibe.

Keep in mind please that the detective, Hercule Poirot, operates prior to the existence of Google, Wikipedia, Yahoo, or Bing. This is shoe leather, ask the right questions, and read body language. The reader is asked to solve the case in spite of the slim possibility of a misdirect here and a nuance there.

The novel is superbly constructed. It is literary architecture along the lines of the Sistine Chapel. Were it Art one would look for it in the Louvre first.

Enjoy the read, enjoy the ride, but don't get snowed under! (-:) SORRY!

Thanks for reading -

Robert White

Habiits of the House

Habits of the House, by Fay Weldon,

St. Martin's Press, 2012, 314 pages.

Introducing the Dilburnes: a group of aristocratic royals bent on maintaining their stature in the community. Set in London of 1899, this tale describes a family that consists of a titled gambler, and his wife – who keeps up appearances in spite of the reality happening beneath her nose. We have heirs apparent in Dilburne daughter Rosina – who is somewhat self-absorbed –  and son Arthur, who is much more fascinated with vehicles than with women.

Robert, the Earl of Dilburne and his wife, the Countess Isobel, are being financed by a Mr. Baum, their investment analyst  He could literally choose to make or break the family fortune at any time. The well-placed Dillburnes could aid their cause by being kind to Baum's wife, a simple enough solution which nevertheless becomes a tangled web of boorish behavior.

One of the family's principle investments is the Modder Kloof, a gold mine in South Africa which has been rendered worthless as it was flooded during the Boer Wars.

We also are introduced to a staff of servants, most notably Grace, but also featuring Elsie, the Nevilles (husband and wife), and Reginald, who acts as chauffer from time to time. The servants have their own information network, and know things of which the Dilburnes might well wish that they were ignorant.

At various points Arthur pays the way for his "exclusive" beck and call girl – Flora, only to learn – well why be a spoiler? The Dilburnes seem intent on treating some of the people who could help them the most in a

shabby fashion. 

Alas! There appears to be only one way of preserving the family position in society: one of the children must marry. Neither Rosina nor Arthur appear to grasp the urgency of the family plight, even while being aware of that which is required.

What we have here is a collection of loose threads: pull on the wrong one and the sweater unravels. The Dilburnes encounter options and opportunities. Still, possibilities do not outcomes guarantee. In the ensuing pages we will meet a butcher's daughter, an American from Chicago. Arthur will learn of a rival for Flora's "affection." Tess and Minnie, mother and daughter, arrive from Chicago to mixed reviews, stating it generously.

Fay Weldon spares no detail; we are told of the fashion of the period as well as the sumptuous meals served at lavish dinner parties as the Dilburnes put on airs or mingle with colleagues. 

Let the reader decide. To a greater or lesser extent we have met the enemy and he is us.

Habits of the House, Synopsis

Habits of the House, by Fay Weldon.

St. Martin's Press, 2012, 314 pages.

Were I to commence with a shop-worn phrase, it might be: "Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive." Fay Weldon’s Habits of the House tells of a family’s misfortune abetted by the self-deception of various family members.

We are in London of 1899, October 24th to be precise. There is a ring of the front door bell – several attempts really – at the home of the Earl of Dilberne. Nobody answers. The visitor waits and waits until finally someone, not even one of the servants, lets him in.

Meet the Dilbernes. The father is a gambler. The mother helps with maintaining the image the family wishes to project. They have a son who is more interested in cars than girls, and a daughter who is interested in the world according to her.

This is a tale of aristocracy. Trouble is, they rent rather than own their fashionable residence, and they are in debt to their financial advisor, whom they treat shabbily. The Dilbernes also give lavish dinners so as to try to foster the notion that all is well when all may well be otherwise.

On the morning of October 24, 1899, the Dilbernes’ financial adviser, having gotten through the front door, drops a bombshell: the family’s holdings in South African gold mines are almost certainly worthless.

The incentive to read on is: do they work it all out or not? They are in a bit of a spot.

The Bartender's Tale

The Bartender's Tale, by Ivan Doig.

Riverhead Books, member of the Penguin Group,  

2012, 387 pages.

 Frankly I don't know how he does it. Ivan Doig has composed a story that simmers as you are drawn into the body of work. Then, at every turn, there are shifts in the storyline: some stunning, some subtle. Doig’s tale is well worth your time. This is true even if you read it simply for the word play.

Every child is in his/ her own way a genetic marvel. Doig’s story of a child called Rusty begins in a sobering way, as a roll in the hay leads to unintended consequences. The end result is to be celebrated. A gate closed behind the couple who engendered Rusty now reveals the boy’s future as he traverses a passageway of splendid possibilities.

First though, Rusty is ‘exiled’ to Arizona after his parents "split the blanket" in the parlance of 1950's Montana. While his aunt and uncle serve him well, his cousins, four and six years older, treat him with something short of abuse. Rusty’s father sends a stipend to help with the care of young Russell, and drops in to take his son on vacations, usually to the Grand Canyon.

One day shortly before school is scheduled to start, "Pop" shows up to take his only son back to Montana. After overcoming some initial misgivings, Rusty happily rides north towards Big Sky Country. Along the way, he gains appreciation, regard, and respect for his father. Pop is an imposing figure with jet black hair like Rusty’s, as well as an ease in dealing with people. Rusty’s father has a distinguished-looking silver streak in his hair, and bright blue eyes that interact expressively with his prominent eye brows.

As Rusty and Pop arrive in Gros Ventre, Montana, their vehicle is suddenly swarmed by sheep. Rusty finds this way beyond disconcerting. His father tells him this is a common occurrence and they are quite safe. They meet Dode Withrow, a sheep rancher herding the flock through town. Dode asks if they are here for the derby. Rusty's father had been hoping to keep the aforesaid derby a surprise. Rusty envisions Go Karts careening down a hilly course; what happens is slightly different.

Rusty winds up wondering if his father just had him come up for the derby and would then send him back to Arizona, or just what the plan is. Pop lets Rusty know in no uncertain terms that he is a keeper.

Pop owns and operates a bar called The Medicine Lodge: below the bar’s name, the sign reads: “Beer / Soft Drinks / Full Bar / And Then Some.”  ‘And Then Some’ refers to the fact that The Medicine Lodge is a social gathering place. The phrase was added by the original owner during prohibition. Rusty’s Pop decided to keep it the sign as it was.

Rusty ends up being quite the helper. The boy deals with inventory, counting cases of beer, spirits, and pop, and sweeps the barroom. When not working, he takes refuge in an elevated back room where he is privy to goings-on in the adult world. Also in the back room is a treasure trove of hocked items which, if not redeemed, result in a mobile warehouse on wheels as Rusty's father crams all he can into his spacious 1933 black Packard and heads north to Canada.

Rusty worries during trips such as these. He fears that the father  he is only just getting to know might meet with some unfortunate end. His father informs him that such trips are required so as to pay the bills. Rusty also worries that he could somehow end up with the mother who abandoned him before he was old enough to remember her.

Later we are treated to the introduction of Rusty to an age-mate and potential playmate. But while the parents figure why not  make friends, the tweens see it as a confrontation with the enemy. In this case the confrontation is between Rusty and Zoe (the age-mate turns out to be a twelve year-old girl). Zoe seems to have an aversion to eating, irrespective of the fact that her parents Melina and Pete Constantine operate a diner.

Zoe empathizes with Rusty's "half orphan" status but thinks it would be great to have only one parent to yell at you. The two kids become as thick as thieves as Rusty forms a habit of eating at the diner. Soon he has the opportunity to show off the back room at The Medicine Lodge along with a vent that can be opened, allowing the two to have eyes and ears on the adult proceedings at the bar. The beauty of this clandestine set-up is that the two  can see without being seen, and hear without being heard.

Neither of the two kids is shy on imagination. They develop a language foreign to both Webster's and Funk and Wagnall’s. The  two continue  to bond as Zoe becomes fascinated by the treasure trove of hocked items in the back room. Rusty also shows her the art of model building, a hobby she picks up quickly and revels in sharing.

When the friends see a "Shakespeare on Wheels" presentation put on by students from the University of Missoula, the show is a match-to-candlewick spark of inspiration for both of them. They arrive curious, and depart vowing to be thespians.

One day a man from back east arrives in a vehicle that will come to be known as the “gab van”. The man’s arrival changes everything. His name, Delano, gets the attention – and sympathy – of Tom Harry, Rusty’s Pop. Tom is a huge fan of FDR, so much so that he has a poster of the Depression Era president taped to a mirror on one side of the cash register. Delano, on assignment from Washington, D.C., is on a mission to give voice to a neglected part of the nation’s history: 1930’s Fort Peck, Montana: then the site of a major project of the U.S. Public Works Administration, and of the saloon-filled shantytowns that had sprung up alongside the vast Fort Peck dam. Delano plans to use his Gab Lab, a van outfitted with microphones and tape recorders, to transcribe as many eye-witness accounts as possible.

Delano and his gab van arrive at a time when Tom’s Medicine Lodge has been honored as The Select Beer Establishment of the Year for the entire state of Montana. Delano urges Tom, who ran a saloon called The Blue Eagle in the 1930’s, to accompany him to a reunion at Fort Peck. When Tom agrees, ghosts from his past surface, disrupting the lives of all involved on multiple levels.

There is a potential seismic shift on the horizon for some of the characters that populate Ivan Doig’s Montana Idyll. Timing being  fickle, however, one life-changing  event that had been discussed fails to materialize. Then again, what does unfold turns out to be more life-changing than anything Doig’s characters might have imagined.

The Great Depression spawned a project that generated over 10,000 jobs in Fort Peck in 1938. This FDR recovery act project mandated the construction of a dam on the Missouri River. Tom Harry’s tavern, The Blue Eagle, was named for the emblem born by the Fairness in Wages legislation enacted by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The Blue Eagle was wildly popular at the time, as due in part to the association with FDR. The other driving force behind the tavern’s popularity was bartender Tom Harry.

In the process of retrieving and restoring history, we encounter transformative changes which it is time for you, fellow readers, to enjoy and to see through to the end. We have a stand-in for Marilyn Monroe for you to meet. We have a "cousin" with a criminal past. And we have a cupid call for a young couple other than the one that might seem evident as you read this.

Oh, lest I forget to mention it, we have an open police investigation that has gone unsolved for some twenty-two years.

Find the high ground and summon all of those within earshot. Or shout it from the rooftops. The Bartender's Tale is a can't-miss reader’s success story, even for those of us who would be just somewhat disposed to giving reading a try.

Review by Robert White

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The Bartender's Tale, Synopsis

Doig, Ivan. The Bartender’s Tale.

Riverhead, 2012, 387 pages.

 The Bartender's Tale is a riveting look at the father-son dynamic. Russell, called "Rusty" by virtually everybody all the time, deals with being a "between the sheets mistake" which led to his mother leaving both him and his father. This is a story worth telling. The author lets it simmer and takes his time. I can say with some certainty that the reader will burst out laughing half a dozen times over the first two chapters.

Rusty is sent to Arizona to live with his aunt Marge, uncle Alvin and two cousins one four, the other six years older. His father sends a stipend to help out. He also visits on occasion and he and Rusty often travel to the Grand Canyon on vacations.

At one point Rusty's father shows up and announces that he and Rusty will be returning to Montana where he owns a saloon. Rusty is about to start school in Phoenix, Arizona but decides that going back with dad might turn out for the best.

On the way "home" Rusty takes the measure of his father and is impressed with how he is physically in terms of his features and his ease in dealing with the public. He sees in his father a man born in the heart of the Great Depression. Rusty sees a man who in a small way is an example of someone who came through the experience as one who defined his generation. Rusty wonders what his own legacy might end up looking like. The author cites Lincoln, Grant and Lee along with Teddy Roosevelt and Mark Twain as men who defined their respective generations.

The scene is Gros Ventre, Montana, where Rusty and his father arrive amidst a herd of sheep being rounded up and headed out. This is a common occurrence in Montana. They meet a Dode Withrow, a sheep rancher. Dode asks if they are taking part in the upcoming "derby". Rusty is thinking ‘soap box derby’ and asks why he wasn’t told about it. His father tells him the derby was meant to be a surprise.

The Saloon is called the Medicine Lodge. Its painted sign says “BEER––SOFT DRINKS–– FULL BAR AND THEN SOME”. Rusty's father lives in a two story home behind the bar.

Rusty's initial experience in Gros Ventre is a trip to a reservoir. He is taught by his father to bait hooks with chicken guts, which nauseates Rusty not a little. This episode becomes a fail at. Too early too cold and no fish. This is topped only by the actual event the next day, where at the Fishing Derby a gust of wind triggers flying poles, bait, hooks and near miss injuries. Unfortunately for Rusty, the near miss is an actual hit and he ends up with a hook embedded in his ear.

A trip to the doctor and an encouraging word from his father smooth things over. The primary issue dealt with is the question ‘This doesn't mean you are sending me back to Arizona does it?’ His father responds, "What kind of an ess of a bee do you think I am?” and remarks, “School starts Monday, we need to get you some pencils and tablets. . .”

Eventually Rusty gets to help his father with an inventory of everything from soda pop to beer to various other spirits. He is then allowed to have eyes and ears to the world as there is a vent that allows him to hear virtually everything that goes on in the saloon, and to see most things. It is during this time that he gains an appreciation for what his father really does: run a social establishment where the idea does not center on getting drunk.

His father wears many hats:  bar keep, accountant, bouncer, trader/merchant, civic-minded member of the community, and oh yeah, single parent. The year is 1960 and everything in Rusty's twelve year-old world is about to change.  

Double Indemnity

Double Indemnity by James M. Cain

Vintage Books / Random House, 1936 (1964)

  

 Perhaps from time to time you meet someone and you get an initial impression. You think that you have a sense of what they might be like or even who they are. When insurance salesman Walter Huff meets Mrs. Nirdlinger, he is just conducting business.

The man of the house is not home, so Huff gives the wife a brief presentation of some insurance renewal options. Herbert and Phyllis Nirdlinger reside there. Insurance is a safeguard against cataclysmic or catastrophic events. Phyllis Nirdlinger tells Huff that Mr. Nirdlinger has been considering the Auto Club instead of renewing. From there. fellow readers, it is on!

There was a song, I believe it was in the 70’s or 80's; part of the lyrics went something like this "...I want to know what love is, I want you to show me."

The essence of Cain’s tale relates to two types of love, the first of the dark noir variety, the second the essence of caring and being protective. One of the main characters was actually once a nurse.

There is every reason to believe that there is a serial killer among Cain’s characters. As for Cain’s partners in crime: they pull it off, until they don't. In the end, the crime goes as initially planned. Yet in the end, the end is imminent.

Perhaps one of the more remarkable characters is the head of the Claims Department, Keyes. Keyes is fascinating because he is the experienced insurance pro, a mastermind who has "seen it all." He is irascible but irreplaceable. He is amazingly prescient while also being fallible. The blend is a well thought out component of the book.

This is a masterful work, a masterpiece. No synopsis can do it justice. James M. Cain did more in one hundred fifteen pages than some authors do in their creative lives. Try it. You'll like it.

March

Brooks, Geraldine.  March.

Penguin, 2005, 280 pages.

Throughout history, citizens of a country, any country, take pride in their nation. This patriotism or perhaps nationalism is justified, whether simply as a matter of pride, or by use of selective memory focusing more on successes than setbacks. Geraldine Brooks has written a Civil War era novel. It is nuanced, it is not lacking in complexity, and it forces the reader to deal with the brutality caused by the disregard for a particular ethnic group, in this case the Negroes, or as we say nowadays, African-Americans. It also deals with the carnage caused by a nation at war with itself.

Mr. March, whose character is drawn from that of the absent father in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, wears several hats in the Geraldine Brooks novel. During the Civil War portion of the novel, he is a father (family man), an army chaplain (man of faith), and a soldier in the Union Army. Before the war he was a peddler/ traveling salesman, an abolitionist, an amateur but competent educator, and a philandering bachelor.

One struggles with the reality of a great nation ever allowing such barbaric behavior as slavery. The author takes us to a plantation where we "witness" a beating, actually a whipping, of a woman no less. Mr. March witnesses this and is to a greater or lesser extent responsible for the incident.

March visits the plantation of a Mr. Clement. They are both learned men, if one could be a slaveholder and still be labeled as such. Clement has a wife, a son, and two daughters. The identity of the second daughter, revealed near the end of Chapter Three, is a real shocker. Clement likes March and invites him to stay after the "peddling" aspect of their dealings is wrapped up.

It is in the effort to help that March inadvertently does irreparable harm, both to someone he is fond of and to himself, as he carries the memory with him, presumably in perpetuity.

Geraldine Brooks puts you in the war. No sugar coating here. You watch a man die not quite in March's arms. You are there as March assists the doctor in makeshift hospital settings. We witness the Hell the nation went through.

If you can deal with the harsh realities, this novel is a well-performed symphony. Obviously the whole purpose of the Civil War was achieved. Men were now free irrespective of race. In reading March, it might help to have an appreciation for literature in general and/ or history specific to the period. The author worked hard but there is no shortage of hurt and we share it as we share our history.