Detective Stories, Edited by Peter Washington, Everyman’s Pocket Classics, published by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, $15.00, 382 pgs., ISBN: 978-0-307-27271-3.  Publication date: October 5, 2009.

        This sweet little hardcover collection, in Pocket Classics format, holds sixteen short detective stories, by such luminary authors as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner, Sara Peretsky, Ian Rankin, Ruth Rendell, Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Bret Harte, and others, including Edgar Alan Poe.

        There’s something for every reader and writer of detective fiction, going back to golden age of the 1920’s and ‘30s, and onward.  One of my favorite stories in this collection, written by Bret Harte, “The Stolen Cigar Case,” is a hilarious spoof of the great Sherlock Holmes, or in this case, “Hemlock Jones,” where the accused thief is none other than the chronicler of the great detective’s exploits.  Other notables include, Sara Peretsky’s “The Takamoku Joseki,” about a murder in a “Go” parlor (a club where a Japanese board game is played, using white and black stones), and Dashiell Hammett’s, “The Gatewood Caper,” about an errant daughter who arranges her own kidnapping to get even with her bullying and unethical father.

        Highly recommended.

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Talking About Detective Fiction by P.D. James; Alfred A. Knopf, publisher. $22.  198 pgs., ISBN: 978-0-307-59282-8.  Release date: 12/01/2009.

        Between the above collection of classic detective stories, and this volume that examines the history and the writers of the genre, a budding writer of detective fiction will have most of the tools he or she needs to understand what makes a good piece of detective fiction and why.

        P.D. James, writing with authority and a singular flair, examines writers from the Golden Age (1920-30’s) of detective fiction to modern masters, discussing style, technique, the process of writing, social history, and the personalities that color our opinion of this unique genre.

        A worthy addition to one’s resource library.  Highly recommended.

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Cults, Conspiracies, & Secret Societies, by Arthur Goldwag, a Vintage Books Paperback Original.  $16.00, 332 pgs. ISBN: 978-0-307-39067-7.  Available now.

        Mr. Goldwag is a freelance writer and editor, and is also the author of The Beliefnet Guide to Kabbalah and ‘Isms and ‘Ologies.  In this reference volume, he includes cults and conspiracies and secret societies, broken down by type with cross-references.  As he mentions in the Introduction: “I’ve tried to be fair-minded, but the very words “cults,” conspiracy theories,” and “secret societies” are value-laden and intrinsically pejorative.”

        Some of the descriptions read as if they had been taken from Wikipedia, and they may have been—it’s difficult to tell, as Mr. Goldwag does not provide any real footnote sourcing for his myriad descriptions of Freemasonry, the Illuminati, Skull and Bones, the New World Order, other organizations and numerous plots.

        Nonetheless, it’s a fun read, if only because all the weirdness of the world is in one handy place.  Black helicopters, the demise of Marilyn Monroe, the Kennedy assassinations, Area 51, alien abductions, Men in Black?  It’s all there and more.

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Black & White & Dead All Over, by John Darnton, Anchor Books trade paperback, $15.00, 351 pgs., ISBN: 978-0-307-38742-4.  Available now.

        Who best to write a story about the newspaper business than a journalist who spent forty years working s a reporter, editor, and foreign correspondent for The New York Times.

        The story takes place at the New York Globe, the city’s longstanding newspaper of note.  Cir-culation and readership are plummeting and the paper has cut back severely on personnel, etc.  When a powerful editor is found dead in the hallway one rainy Saturday morning, with a spike

hammered into his chest—the same spike he used to kill stories—the detective assigned to the case finds that there are a lot of suspects to choose from.

        Priscilla Bollingsworth, the detective, and Jude Hurley, one of the Globe’s young intrepid reporters team up to investigate who among the old guard and scheming careerists may be involved.  But as they do, more bodies turn up, including that of a primary suspect.

        Somewhat satirical, yet a little over-laden with facts about the news biz and a few side stories, the action bogs down from time to time.  Suspects are eliminated and others appear, red herrings abound, and confusion reigns, until a mixed metaphor eventually leads to the killer.        CD

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The Lost Art of Gratitude, an Isabel Dalhousie Novel, by Alexander McCall Smith, Pantheon Books, $23.95, 262 pgs., hardcover, ISBN: 978-0-375-42514-1.  Available now.

        Readers may remember Alexander McCall Smith from The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Series (now ten volumes and an HBO series), but he is also the author of a score of books and novels, including the Dalhousie series.  Born in Zimbabwe, Alexander McCall Smith, taught at the University of Botswana Law School and currently lives in Scotland, where he is professor emeritus of medical law at the University of Edinburgh and serves on many international boards and bodies concerned with bioethics.

        Isabel Dalhousie is a philosopher, editor of a literary journal, prone to over-philosophizing, snooping and sleuthing.  In this volume, she has become a mother, and is contemplating marriage to her live-in lover, Jamie, a musician, and the doting father of her eighteen-month old son, Charlie.  Conflict abounds: Jamie was the former boyfriend of her niece, Cat; Isabel has been accused of plagiarism by her nemesis, Professor Dove; and an old adversary, high-flying financier, Minty Auchterlonie, now married with a toddler of her own, has drafted Isabel into trying to keep an old lover at bay, one who threatens to reveal the origins of Minty’s young son.

        This is not a formulaic sleuth novel, and it takes a long time to get going.  Isabel Dalhousie is a juggler of life, a mother, a lover, an editor, and a philosopher—and she dwells on this juggling at length.  But, in the end, she discovers that she has been used for nefarious purposes and she puts a stop to it, in a most clever fashion.        CC

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Haiku, by Andrew Vachss, published by Pantheon Books.  $24.95, 214 pgs., hardcover, ISBN: 978-0307-37849-1.  Release date: November 3, 2009.

        As a lawyer and consultant in private practice, Andrew Vachss represents children and youth exclusively.  So it is a departure from much of his fiction when he delves into the world of the homeless and mentally ill in this new novel that follows a band of homeless outcasts on a journey to recover what each has lost over time.

        Ho was a martial arts instructor, brought to the U.S. from Japan to operate his own studio; the death of a beloved student makes him re-examine his life.  To atone, he sells his possessions and joins those on the streets.  Quietly charismatic, he draws others to him—Michael, a compulsive gambler; Ranger, a former Vietnam vet with a short grasp on reality; Lamont, a once fearless gang leader and hopeless alcoholic; Target, a man lost to words, who communicates by echoing the sounds of others; and Brewster, an obsessive collector of books that he stashes in an abandoned warehouse.

        All of them come together after Michael spots a woman in a Rolls Royce throw something into the river. She appears to be ripe for blackmail, and he attempts to convince the group to help him find her, but in the end, they all find something completely different.

        A strange, but fascinating tale, wrapped in the enigma of a haiku.        CC

      
    
                                  Copyright © Sandy Raschke