~ Telling the Truth, Mainly
Did you ever know a serious emotion to express itself in a subordinate clause?
~ Clouds of Witness, BBC TV miniseries, 1972, based on Dorothy L. Sayers’ novel Clouds of Witness, a Lord Peter Wimsey mystery. IMBd credits both Sayers and Anthony Stevens as writers, but because the line is used solely to create atmosphere, and Sayers died in 1957, I doubt it was her idea.
Back in my teaching days, I handed a student a copy of T. H. White’s The Once and Future King and told her I thought she might like it. She did. So much, in fact, that she volunteered to write a review for the school newspaper.
The review went something like this: I loved this book. It was just so…Guinevere was terrible. She was just so… It was so sad…It’s a wonderful book. I just love it.
Unfortunately, the review was never published, because instead of turning into ideas and thence into sentences and finding its way onto paper, it remained a clump of molecules of emotion lodged somewhere in the vicinity of the student’s corpus callosum. Only a few tiny bits escaped as babble.
The reason was no mystery: The writer was too close to her subject. She lacked distance, detachment. She needed, as Wordsworth said when defining poetry, to recollect her powerful emotion in tranquility.
Lack of detachment is a common condition. I’ve suffered from it for weeks.
Several days ago, I posted part of a paragraph from Terry Shames’ first novel, A Killing at Cotton Hill, and illustrated it with a photograph of four white-faced Herefords. That was all.
That’s still all. I’m too close to the book. I wouldn’t dare try to review it now.
If I did, it would come out like this:
I love this book. It’s just so…There’s this wonderful sentence on the second page about hovering cows…That’s exactly what cows do…I can just see those cows…The person who wrote that sentence knows cows…And the dialogue…It’s just so…I just love it.
As soon as I saw it, I fell in love with that cow sentence.* I’ve read well past page two, but I can’t erase hovering cows from my mind. So I’ll say no more about A Killing at Cotton Hill.
I can report that yesterday evening I attended a reading at BookPeople celebrating the release of Terry Shames’ second book, and the second Samuel Craddock mystery, The Last Death of Jack Harbin.
Terry spoke, read an excerpt from the book, and finished up by taking questions from the audience. To prevent the possibility that this part of the post turn into babble, I’ll simply list some of the notes I jotted down:
Because of the hour, as well as my lack of detachment, this is as far as my not-quite-review will go. Suffice it to say that I enjoyed Terry’s reading, that I love A Killing at Cotton Hill,** and that The Last Death of Jack Harbin has gone to the top of my To Be Read list.
For more about Terry Shames and her books, read Terry’s “What’s Next for Samuel Craddock” and “MysteryPeople Q&A with Terry Shames,” both on the MysteryPeople blog.
_____
* The sentence isn’t really about cows. It’s about Samuel Craddock. But I am fond of white-faced Herefords, and the image Terry painted is so vivid, the cows overshadow the protagonist, at least in my mind.
** I forgot to take my camera to the reading, so I’ve illustrated with a photograph I took myself. The fur on the right of the book shouldn’t be there, but it was easier to just take the picture than to move the cat.
I am pleased—but not surprised—to announce that Kaye George’s CHOKE: An Imogene Duckworthy Mystery has been nominated for an Agatha Award for Best First Novel.
The Agathas, which honor the “traditional mystery” (“loosely defined as mysteries which contain no explicit sex or excessive gore or violence”), are awarded annually at the Malice Domestic convention in Bethesda, Maryland.
A review of Choke appeared here last June. After almost nine months of deliberation, I still agree with what I wrote then. So instead repeating myself, I’ll provide a link.
I will add, however, that although Choke contains no explicit sex, would-be PI Immy Duckworthy wouldn’t mind if it did contain just a bit. She runs across some awfully good-looking guys in the unlicensed private detective business. Both Saltlick, Texas and Wymee Falls have more than their fair share.
Some of them don’t even turn out to be criminals.
I’m proud to have author Patricia Deuson as my guest to introduce her new mystery novel, Superior Longing. Please join me in welcoming her.
Thanks for the invitation, Kathy! It’s a pretty exciting day for me, and I’m glad to be here. The first book of the Neva Moore series, SUPERIOR LONGING, sees the light of day – or since it’s an ebook – the light of a LCD screen, today, 9/15/11. I’m really happy to have this book published and hope readers will enjoy it. Here’s a brief idea of what happens during Neva’s first outing.
SUPERIOR LONGING is set during the frigid spring on the beautiful and harsh southern shore of Lake Superior. When Neva Moore’s uncle drowns and the details of his death twist and turn, her pursuit of the truth weaves through small town politics, smuggling, and superstition, to end where it all began, back in the family and another death on an icy lake.
As a first book must, Superior Longing introduces the ‘cast’ [which like any ongoing production has regulars and irregulars as well as a host of red shirts] First is Sierra Nevada Moore, known as Neva, who is administrator/accountant/instructor/renovator-in-residence at almost renovated Cooks Inn Cooking School which is scheduled to open shortly. Or will it? This is a question the book asks, and thankfully answers. Next is her boss, Linnea Addams, who doesn’t think it’s her job to make Neva’s job easy. So she never does. Then there is the cast of irregulars, and those red shirts who are surely goners. How and why they all fit together is the tale.
But the story is more than the story of Neva and Neva’s uncle, and a bunch of irregulars. It’s the story of 
how she comes to terms with his death by finding the justice he can never get for himself, justice for the dead. This is something Neva will carry with her into her next book, which I’m writing now, Collective Instinct, and any book I write about her. She will always be impelled by this sense of obligation. Fortunately for her and me, Neva finds dead people everywhere.
But outside of finding dead people all over the place, what does Neva do? Well, she teaches and she cooks and she has the social life she has time for, which is very little. She likes to cook and was born to do it. During the busy day, classes occupy her time, and meals are communal with the staff taking on the preparation in rotation, and there are rarely left-overs. At night the big kitchen is empty. When she doesn’t have other plans Neva will be back at her workstation making a simple dish for supper, maybe some zucchini and chickpea pancakes, accompanied by a crisp California rosé from one of the vineyards not too far away.
If you want to find out what happens when Neva talks chickpeas, pancakes and more, you find it on the Cooks Inn Blog. Of course, since she is a teacher, you might get a little learning on the side. While there will be few recipes in the books, when she feels like it, Neva blogs. She feels like blogging quite a bit too, although I don’t know where she finds the time.
Superior Longing, published by Echelon Press, is now available, and since it’s digital, will be until the end of time at Amazon.com as a Kindle ebook, at Smashwords, Omilit and as a Barnes & Noble Nook.
Superior Longing has a blog:
http://superiorlonging.blogspot.com/
and a Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Superior-Longing/130098057083303?sk=wall
As does the writer:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1229310389
who also twitters!
Thanks again, Kathy!
Thanks, Patricia, for being here on your special day. I look forward to reading SUPERIOR LONGING. Readers, Patricia welcomes your questions and comments.
Question: If you combined Lucille Ball with Inspector Clouseau, what would you get?
Answer: Imogene Duckworthy, amateur PI and main character of Kaye George’s new mystery, CHOKE.
Immy is a delight–the 22-year-old unwed mother of 3-year-old Nancy Drew Duckworthy (Drew), she lives with her retired-librarian mother, Hortense, in Saltlick, Texas; slings hash at her Uncle Huey’s cafe; and wants with all her heart to be a detective like her “dead sainted father.”
When Immy up and quits her job (Huey wants her to work double shifts again), and then explains her sudden unemployment by telling Hortense that Huey pinched her bottom (well, he DID pinch the other waitress’s bottom), Hortense heads to the cafe to give Huey what-for. Then Huey is murdered, the police take Hortense to the station, and Immy has her very first case. Guided by the Moron’s Compleat PI Guidebook, she sets out to find the perp.
The Moron’s Compleat PI Guidebook says nothing about staging a jailbreak, holing up in a Cowtail motel, or color-coding her list of suspects. But it does mention disguises, just what Immy needs to investigate on her home turf. An outfit that combines “Buns of Foam” with “Boobs and Belly,” however, leaves the amateur PI in need of the Jaws of Life, and the reader in stitches.
Kaye George’s CHOKE is a different kind of mystery. In most detective novels, the reader watches the sleuth-protagonist work his way through chapter after chapter, picking up clues and discarding red herrings, until he finally comes up with the answer. In CHOKE, however, the reader picks up clues while watching the gullible, ultra-literal, but enthusiastic Immy charge through to the solution while remaining blissfully clueless.
With CHOKE, first-timer Kaye George has accomplished something special: an original mystery, an original Immy, and a novel that leaves readers laughing and wanting more.
FTC Disclaimer: No one gave me this book. I bought it with my own money. Kaye George is one of my critique partners, but our relationship did not influence my review. I did not tell her how to write CHOKE, and she did not tell me what to write in my review. In fact, I never even critiqued the manuscript, and my introduction to the novel came when my copy arrived in the mail. I wish I had critiqued it, because I would like to take credit for “Boobs and Belly,” and the part about the letter opener, and the chicken. But the whole thing was Kaye’s idea. Even the orange pickup on the cover.
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by Miz B of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along. Just do the following:
My teasers:
She said, “You play your cards quite close, don’t you, Thomas.”
He said, “I have no cards at all.”
Elizabeth George, This Body of Death
Kathy Waller 