A Worthwhile Trip to Mysteries Past

by Julia Buckley

Do you love watching an old movie now and then? Something in black and white, filled with a dancing Fred Astaire or a whimsical Doris Day? I love the occasional indulgence in an old film; in the same way, I love to revisit mysteries from another era.

Here are the beginnings of three of my favorites--see if they make you want to read on. If they do, you're guaranteed some great reading for the holiday weekend.

1. "Carmel Lacy is the silliest woman I know, which is saying a good deal. The only reason that I was having tea with her in Harrod's on that wet Thursday afternoon was that when she rang me up she had been so insistent that it had been impossible to get out of; and besides, I was so depressed anyway that even tea with Carmel Lacy was still preferable to sitting alone at home in a room that still seemed to be echoing with that last quarrel with Louis. That I had been entirely in the right, and that Louis had been insufferably, immovably, furiously in the wrong was no particular satisfaction, since he was now in Stockholm, and I was still here in London, when by rights we should have been lying on a beach together in the Italian sunshine, enjoying the first summer holiday we had been able to plan together since our honeymoon two years ago. The fact that it had rained almost without ceasing ever since he had gone hadn't done anything to mitigate his offense; and when looking up "other people's weather" in The Guardian each morning, I found Stockholm enjoying a permanent state of sunshine, and temperatures somewhere in the seventies, I was easily able to ignore the reports of a wet, thundery August in southern Italy and concentrate steadily on Louis's sins and my own grievances."


Mary Stewart
AIRS ABOVE THE GROUND (1965)


2. "The first time I laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was drunk in a Rolls Royce Silver Wraith outside the terrace of The Dancers. The parking lot attendant had brought the car out and he was still holding the door open becuase Terry Lennox's left foot was still dangling outside, as if he had forgotten he had one. He had a young-looking face but his hair was bone white. You could tell by his eyes that he was plastered to the hairline, but otherwise he looked like any other nice young guy in a dinner jacket who had been spending too much money in a joint that exists for that purpose and no other.

There was a girl beside him. Her hair was a lovely shade of dark red and she had a distant smile on her lips and over her shoulders she had a blue mink that almost made the Rolls Royce look like just another automobile. It didn't quite. Nothing can.

The attendant was the usual half-tough character in a white coat with the name of the restaurant stitched across the front of it in red. He was getting fed up.

"Look, mister," he said with an edge to his voice, "would you mind a whole lot pulling your leg in the car so I can kind of shut the door? Or should I open it all the way so you can fall out?"

The girl gave him a look which ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back. It didn't bother him enough to give him the shakes. At The Dancers they get the sort of people that disillusion you about what a lot of golfing money can do for the personality.

A low-swung foreign speedster with no top drifted into the parking lot and a man got out of it and used the dash lighter on a long cigarette. He was wearing a pullover check shirt, yellow slacks, and riding boots. He strode off trailing clouds of incense, not even bothering to look toward the Rolls Royce. He probably thought it was corny. At the foot of the steps up to the terrace he paused to put a monocle in his eye.

The girl said with a nice burst of charm: "I have a wonderful idea, darling. Why don't we just take a cab to your place and get your convertible out? It's such a wonderful night for a run up the coast to Montecito. I know some people there who are throwing a dance around the pool.

The white-haired lad said politely: "Awfully sorry, but I don't have it any more. I was compelled to sell it." From his voice and articulation you wouldn't have known he had anything stronger than an orange juice to drink.

"Sold it, darling? How do you mean?" She slid away from him on the seat, but her voice slid away a lot farther than that.

"I mean I had to. For eating money."

"Oh, I see." A slice of spumoni wouldn't have melted on her now. . . . "
From THE LONG GOODBYE
Raymond Chandler (1953)


3. "The lake was cold, black, evil, nor more than five hundred yards in length, scarely two hundred in breadth, a crooked stretch of glassy calm shadowed by the mountainsides that slipped steeply into its dark waters and went plunging down. There were no roads, no marked paths around it; only a few tracks, narrow ribbons, wound crazily along its high sides, sometimes climbing up and around the rough crags, sometimes dropping to the sparse clumps of fir at its water line. The eastern tip of the lake was closed off by a ridge of precipices. The one approach was by its western end. Here, the land eased away into gentler folds, forming a stretch of fine alpine grass strewn with pitted boulders and groups of more firs. This was where the trail, branching up from the rough road that linked villages and farms on the lower hills, ended in a bang and a whimper: a view of the forbidding grandeur and a rough wooden table with two benches where the summer visitor could eat his hard-boiled eggs and caraway-sprinkled ham sandwiches."

And so begins Helen MacInnes' great thriller, The Salzburg Connection, which gives The Bourne Identity a run for its money.

Anyone who hasn't tried MacInnes might be pleasantly surprised to find she has many exciting books, and in fact the mid-twentieth century has an endless array of wonderful mysteries that are fun to return to. This was just a taste.

What's your favorite old mystery?

What's Your Favorite Today?

by Julia Buckley















Everyone loves mysteries. At least this was my assumption when I did a little informal poll with the query “What’s your favorite mystery?” These are results from real people who also happen to be related to me.

My twelve-year-old son said he enjoyed the Chet Gecko series of mysteries by Bruce Hale, with titles like The Big Nap and The Malted Falcon. (Both of my boys got to meet Hale last year, as pictured above. Note the cool Gecko pin on Hale's lapel.)

My nine-year-old son chose the Nate the Great series by Marjorie Sharmat; in honor of the season he chose Nate the Great and the Halloween Hunt.

My husband loves The Judas Goat by Robert B. Parker.

I, as ever, would choose a title by Mary Stewart, as would my mom. She is currently reading Nine Coaches Waiting.

But beyond my family, I wanted to open this up to the Deadly Daughters and to mystery fans. Granted, your answer may change from day to day, so I’ll ask it this way: What’s your favorite mystery TODAY?

Mary Stewart and Her Literary Children

by Julia Buckley















Happy Birthday to Mary Stewart, my favorite writer, who is 91 today. In her honor I shall discuss something I've blogged about before: the notion of thematic repetition.

Sometimes when I read mysteries I feel that I am reading, along with the story, a hidden text of the author's subliminal intention, or perhaps a repressed desire. There are always patterns, recognizable repetitions in an author's work--beyond the recurring setting or character. Sometimes there are themes that return in different guises. Maybe the author is continually exploring issues of abuse, or unrequited love, or class snobbery. And sometimes I wonder--does the author know I see this? Does the author recognize the pattern at all?

In the case of Mary Stewart, my favorite author, it's the pattern of boys. Boys are an important part of many of her novels, and they range in age from about seven all the way to the teens. Mary Stewart herself was married but childless, and I always felt that I was seeing her desire for a son in these stories because of the loveable boys she created, the sweet, adorable, huggable boys who engaged so sweetly in memorable dialogues with Stewart heroines.

The first boy, of course, is David Byron in Madam, Will You Talk? This boy is protected by the heroine, Charity Selborne, from a man she thinks is trying to kill him. (Can't go into too much detail here). He is seen as vulnerable, despite his age (thirteen), and very much a little gentleman, despite his love of playing by the river with his mutt, Rommel. Charity falls in love with the boy in the novel, and the reader falls in love with him, as well.

Then there is nine-year-old Philippe, the Comte de Valmy, in Nine Coaches Waiting. Not only is someone trying to kill Philippe, but the bullet whizzes right past his head while he is in the charge of his young and devoted teacher, Linda Martin. After a series of events which build growing suspense, Linda goes on the run with Philippe in order to protect him. Before this, however, there are some lovely dialogues that establish her growing closeness with Philippe, as in this conversation where they discuss bears in the Valmy woods, and Linda tries to teach Philippe English:

"Then I hope to goodness we don't meet one today."

"They are asleep," said Philippe comfortingly. "There is no danger unless one treads on them where they sleep." He jumped experimentally into a deep drift of dead leaves, sending them swirling up in bright flakes of gold. The dirt was fortunately bearless. "They sleep very sound," said Philippe, who appeared to find it necessary to excuse this failure. "With nuts in the pocket like an ecureuil."

"Squirrel."

"Skervirrel. Perhaps you prefer we do not look for bears?"

"I would really rather not, if you don't mind," I said apologetically.

"Then we will not," he said generously. "But there are many other things to see in the woods, I think. Papa used to tell me of them. There is chamois, and marmottes and the foxes, oh, many! Do you think that when I have ten years--"

"'When I am ten.'"

"When I am ten years old I can have a gun and shoot, Mademoiselle?"

"Possibly not when you are ten, Philippe, but certainly when you are a bit older."

"Ten is old."

"It may be old, but it's not very big. You wouldn't be big enough to use the right gun for a bear."

"Skervirrels, then."

"Squirrel."

"Skervirrel. I could have a small gun for skervirrel when I am ten?"

"Possibly, though I should doubt it. In any case, it's what they call an unworthy ambition." (from Nine Coaches Waiting, c. 1958).

Phillipe is most loveable, and so is the seventeen-year-old Timothy Lacey, a boy who accompanies Vanessa March on a flight to Vienna in Airs Above the Ground. Timothy is an affable boy, misunderstood and largely ignored, Vanessa thinks, by his socialite mother, and so a bond is formed between the Vanessa and Tim. When the boy cannot meet up with his father in Vienna as planned, he continues to accompany Vanessa to Oberhausen, where she must try to find her own husband. Much of the charm of the book is due to young Tim and his relationship with Vanessa.

The boys in Stewart's books bring out the nurturing instincts of her heroines, and it reveals a maturity in them that they did not always realize they possessed. In This Rough Magic, a young, handsome Greek teenager named Spiro goes missing, and Lucy Waring, the young English protagonist, is distressed by this and eager to help find the boy and delve into the other mysterious happenings near her sister's house on Corfu.

In a similar manner, Nicola Farris, the English heroine of The MoonSpinners, wants to help a man named Mark find his young brother Colin; both men have witnessed a crime, and Colin has been taken captive. Mark fears for Colin's life, but is gunshot, and must depend on Nicola to determine the boy's location and whether or not he is still alive.

There are other patterns, of course, in Mary Stewart's books, and some elements of the romantic suspense novels hint at themes in the Arthurian novels that come later. But it was these stories that first captured my imagination, and I still wonder about them, about her, and whether these boys were the children of her heart.

The Mystery of Dancing Horses

by Julia Buckley
Someone sent me an e-mail with a link to this dancing horse. I was entranced. What a remarkable feat! I had never heard of horses being able to do this. Or had I?

Then I remembered the wonderful Mary Stewart novel called Airs Above the Ground, a title which describes the way that the world-famous Lippizaner Stallions seem to "fly" in the course of their show, and how they are trained to perform these airs above the ground as a part of their breeding. The horses are majestic, powerful, beautiful.

In the mystery, a woman goes to Austria pursuing something else, but ends up embroiled in a suspense story involving these stallions, her missing husband, and a seventeen-year-old boy named Timothy, who has unexpectedly accompanied her on the journey.

It's one of Stewart's later novels, and one of my favorites. Here's a description from Stewart's biographer, Lenemaja Freedman:

"Mary Stewart seems to love animals, and she obviously knows a great deal about horses and riding. This talent is apparent in The Ivy Tree in Annabel's ability to handle horses and is even more apparent in Stewart's choice of Austria and the Lippizan Stallions as the background for Airs Above the Ground (1965). Her visits to Vienna and to the Spanish Riding School were the inspiration for the plot . . . . Its protagonist is Vanessa March, a young veterinarian who has treated horses . . . ."

If you haven't tried Mary Stewart, you should read Airs, especially if you like horses. If you've read her, this is a great book to rediscover on a summer evening.

And how about that dancing horse!

(image:http://www.michaela-maurer.de/paintings/das_pferd_in_der_kunst_gemaelde/005-dancing_horse_0015.jpg)