Wine of Violence by Priscilla Royal

Well, I’ve spoken before about misleading blurbs, but this one on Kindle takes the biscuit. Let me quote:

“Roman Britain in 91 AD is a raw frontier province, a troublesome part of the mighty Empire ruled by Domitian Caesar. Tension is especially high in the north, where Aurelia Marcella, a young innkeeper from Italy, runs the Oak Tree Mansio on the road to York.
A string of savage murders disrupts her peaceful life, and she and her Roman friends find themselves under attack from a secret native war-band, the Shadow-men, whose aim is to drive all Romans out. A traveler, Quintus, is nearly killed close to the inn, and he and Aurelia must track down the rebel warriors and identify their mysterious masked leader, the Shadow of Death.”

A few points. It’s actually set in 1270 AD in a priory and concerns the death of Brother Rupert, who has apparently killed himself by (brace yourself) castrating himself. Prioress Eleanor, newly-appointed to the role against the wishes of everybody else, and Brother Thomas, a monk with dark secrets, forced into investigating financial problems at the priory by a mysterious master. Do you think that they made a slight mistake on the website? The fact that this book actually appears twice at different prices – the one I got was the cheaper one – just might support this theory.

OK, enough niggling, let’s get to the book itself. Another name ticked off on my Historical Writers Challenge, but is it any good?

Burglars Can’t Be Choosers by Lawrence Block

Bernie Rhodenbarr – gentleman burglar – has been hired by a mysteriously familiar figure to break into the apartment of a theatrical agent to locate a small blue leather box. He knows the agent is going to be out and he knows that the box is hidden in a roll-top desk. Breaking in – although breaking does imply a lack of class – he finds three problems. One, no blue box. Two, two policeman, bursting in to arrest him. Oh, and three, the agent’s dead body in the bedroom. Things don’t look too promising for our hero…

Over the course of about thirty-five years, Lawrence Block has written ten Burglar novels – all of the rest are “The Burglar Who…” but this is the first. I was inspired to pick it up when Patrick recently reviewed The Burglar In The Library. The view seemed to be, from the comments, that people preferred the later books rather than the earlier ones. That seemed at odds with my memories of the series – I’ve read them all, but ages ago, so I thought I’d return to a book that I know I enjoyed when I read it. But would things have changed?

The Puzzly – The ISOTCM Book of the Month – April 2012

And so, with all due reverence, a deathly silence falls for the announcement of the April Puzzly – the In Search Of The Classic Mystery Novel book of the month “award”. I think I’ll leave the quotation marks around the word “award” until a time at which the Puzzly actually becomes something tangible, rather than a vague sense of goodwill and appreciation.

Just to remind you, this is part of the Crime Fiction Pick of the Month meme over at the Mysteries In Paradise blog and if you want to see what other people have been recommending, then why not pop over there? After you’ve read my post of course…

Open Season by Archer Mayor

Lieutenant Joe Gunther, of the Brattleboro police department in Vermont, is called to the scene of the crime when an old lady, Thelma Reitz, has apparently shot dead an intruder, a man who has been tormenting her over the past few weeks and had threatened to attack her that very night. It rapidly becomes apparent that the man had been set up – someone else had sent threatening messages and tricked him into going to the house at the right time. Oddly, both Thelma and the victim both served on the same jury a few years back on a murder case – and some of the other jurors are similarly implicated in such incidents.

Gunther soon realises that this is all a plan to re-open the case. But who would go to such extreme measures to find the murderer of a young woman? And how much further will they go?

This is the first book in a series of twenty two books featuring Joe Gunther and a clear candidate for Vermont in my Mystery Tour of the USA. But my reasons for reading it are much sillier than that.

Quincannon’s Game by Bill Pronzini

John Quincannon was a Secret Service agent but has now (well, in the United States in the 1890s) become a private investigator in partnership with Sabina Carpenter, an ex-Pinkerton and the object of his unrequited desire. This book collects three short stories and one novella featuring the pair – well, primarily Quincannon – as they investigate some bizarre crimes.

Bill Pronzini impressed me with the novel Hoodwink, a modern spin on the classic locked room mystery, so I thought I’d try out some more of his work. In particular I was drawn to this collection, as I do like the western-detective crossover, as evidenced by my raving about Steve Hockensmith’s work and also my fondness for Edward D Hoch’s Ben Snow mysteries. So, that’s pretty stiff competition – how does Quincannon fare next to those rivals? Well he does have someone to help him out in the novella – a certain visitor from London who’s lying low after faking his death at the Reichenbach Falls.

Still Life by Louise Penny

In the town of Three Pines, in the province of Quebec, a group of friends, most of them artists, are having a get-together. One of them, Jane Neal, has, after a long life of painting, finally agreed to submit a work for a local art show, and it has, somewhat controversially, been accepted. The next day though, Jane is found dead in the snow, shot through the heart by a hunting arrow.

Is this an accident? (No, obviously). Enter Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, homicide detective with the Sûreté du Quebec. He clearly suspects foul play but can he prove that it wasn’t an accident? And can he find the killer?

Louise Penny is a multi-award winning writer for this series of eight books, four of which (I think) are set in the same town. I’ve seen a number of good reviews on the web for her work, so I decided it was time to pick up one of her books. So, given the prize-winning talent on display here – why did I have real trouble getting to the end of this mystery?

Sherlock Holmes – The Adventure of the Perfidious Mariner by Jonathan Barnes

It has been four months since the Titanic sank in April 1912. J. Bruce Ismay, the former director of the White Star Line and a survivor of the disaster is haunted by his guilt. Everyone points the finger of blame at him for taking a place in a lifeboat leaving the ship, including one Doctor John Watson, whose wife was a victim of the tragedy.

But darker forces are also haunting Ismay. He has been seeing glimpses of a spectral woman, soaking wet and covered in seaweed. And people around him are beginning to die – their bodies found in a puddle of salt-water with seaweed draped over them as well. Ismay’s only hope is an estranged ex-colleague of John Watson, who now lives in Surrey tending his bee-hives. A certain Mr Sherlock Holmes.

For a while, Big Finish Productions have been producing audio dramatisations of Sherlock Holmes adventures, both classic and original. So how does this latest story, written by novelist Jonathan Barnes, measure up?