Tag Archives: historical

The House on Mulberry Street by Maan Meyers (1996) – BR00012 (2001) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸

The PolyBlog
February 18 2001

Plot or Premise

Esther Breslau is a Jewish immigrant who has found a job working as a photographer in the graft-filled world of 1895 Manhattan. John Tonnerman is an honest cop, a rare commodity on a police-force filled with those on the take and in a city where your innocence depends on the size of your pocketbook. Esther takes a picture during a riot and the thugs notice and come after her. A reporter she has been working with has the plates but the thugs worry about what he knows and take matters into their own hands to silence him forever. John and Esther try to figure it all out.

What I Liked

The research was impeccable, and the epilogue is a nice touch to separate fact from fiction. The writing is first-rate and the settings are alive with the time. Each image portrays the world of the time, and the reader is transported easily with each page.

What I Didn’t Like

A couple of small nit-picky points — there are a lot of characters, which can be a problem to track in mystery stories, but they are sufficiently different here that they don’t run together as much. A few of the characters (such as the reporter) were fleshed out a little TOO much, but I’m assuming part of that was with a view to them showing up in future stories too.

The Bottom Line

One of the best historical mysteries I have read.

Fools, Knaves and Heroes: Great Political Short Stories by Jeffrey Archer and Simon Bainbridge (Editors) (1989) – BR00080 (2000) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
March 12 2000

Plot or Premise

This is a collection of short political stories from various famous authors dating back to the 1800s.

What I Liked

The best story of the collection is by Mark Twain, entitled The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg (an interesting story of greed that corrupts an incorruptible town, prompted by a man wronged by the town). James Thurber’s story, The Greatest Man in the World, is a slightly different take on flying around the world, as a man flies non-stop while the media and public scramble to meet him and the government tries to hide the fact that his character isn’t that great. L.E. Jones’ story, The Bishop’s Aunt, focuses on occupied Eastern Europe during the war and questions of sacrifice, faith, martyrdom, and strategy. And Jeffrey Archer’s own story, The Coup, has two business rivals stranded in Nigeria during a coup, and having to resolve their differences.

What I Didn’t Like

Three stories were good, but not as good as the rest. Charles Dickens story, The Election for Beadle, tells the tale of an election for church Beadle, and two men fighting to elect their choice. Rudyard Kipling’s tale of The Village that Voted the Earth Was Flat has a fight between a man and his buddies against a town that had a speed trap set to catch speeders. Finally, Saki’s tale of Ministers of Grace is a really strange tale of turning political animals into actual animals, and letting angels take their place.

The Bottom Line

Interesting collection, but uneven.

Mortal Memory by Thomas H. Cook (1993) – BR00086 (1999) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
October 11 1999

Plot or Premise

A young boy loses his mother, sister and brother to an apparent killing spree by his father. Years later, an author tracks down the boy, now a man with a wife and son, and asks him to remember the details of their last few months together.

What I Liked

The basic plot is somewhat interesting in that it deals with the young boy’s impressions of life, now recolored and filtered through the eyes of an adult, and the sudden realizations of what he actually saw and heard in adult conversations which made no sense at the time, but which are all too clear now. A reinterpretation of history, in a sense, that allows the context to show more clearly than a simple linear telling might have done.

What I Didn’t Like

Two aspects stand out as negative factors. First, there is the confused telling of the story. At the beginning, it seems far too disjointed, and the continuous references to the future to build suspense actually fall flat. Secondly, there is a sense of detachment throughout the story, almost a clinical feel that keeps you removed from the main character and limits the novel to simply “telling” the story rather than having the reader “live” it through the eyes and actions of the characters. The fact that the ending is all too predictable is not necessarily a negative factor in this story, as it doesn’t detract from an interesting read into the psyche of a slowly disintegrating family, and there are twists at the end that show the dangers of reinterpreting history from a cracked lens. Not everything happens the way the little grey cells remember, nor the way reality would tend to dictate.

The Bottom Line

Not everything happened the way you remember.

Beyond the Great Snow Mountains by Louis L’Amour (1999) – BR00050 (1999) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
August 11 1999

Plot or Premise

A collection of ten short stories.

What I Liked

  • Crash Landing — A great twist story, about a crashed plane and the man who takes charge to get everyone off before the plane slips off the edge of the snow-covered cliff.
  • Sideshow Champion — A brawling boxer gets the championship fight of his life, but he knows the ones backing the champion are all crooked and will stop at nothing to bring him down. And he knows he has to get out of the limelight to train, so he goes back to the circus as a sideshow boxer to practice for the weeks before the fight.
  • The Money Punch — Another boxing story about a kid who’s up against the rackets and an ex-trainer who is more than a little crooked. Add in a missing new trainer, and the fact that he needs training — he’s got a great right but his left needs to be developed so he can be a better fighter. Oh, and he wants the girl who owns the fight farm.
  • Roundup in Texas — A typical western story where cattle rustlers are lowering cattle estimates, and the foreman looks to be a chump who simply over-estimated. Gun battle at the end, and lots of story in a short timeframe.
  • Under the Hanging Wall — A private-eye story about a man hired to go to a town and find out why his brother would have killed a mine owner. The Sheriff is no help, and there’s a woman who belongs in the big city, not in a bus-stop town along the highway. Set in the early 20th century.

Other stories include: By the Waters of San Tadeo (town bully holds village hostage on island); Meeting at Falmouth (ambushing a traveling gentleman); and Beyond the Great Snow Mountains (woman taken prisoner in Chinese mountains by a tribe).

What I Didn’t Like

Two stories weren’t that great — Coast Patrol (WW II story about a freighter captured by Germans and an Allied pilot) and Gravel Pit (thief gets extorted and wants to kill the extortionist).

The Bottom Line

Decent but eclectic bunch of shortstories.

The Best of Sisters in Crime by Marilyn Wallace (Editor) (1998) – BR00055 (1999) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
August 11 1999

Plot or Premise

A collection of shortstories from the members of Sisters-in-Crime, the association primarily for women mystery authors.

What I Liked

  • Elizabeth George: The Evidence Exposed — An Agatha-Christie-type story, with an excursion to study British architecture. Stereotype characters but with great twists, and lots of Christie-like turns for explaining possible motivations;
  • Carolyn G. Hart: Upstaging Murder — A mystery weekend starts to look a little more sinister when one of the guests tries to get a jump on the competition with a little sleuthing, and sees one of the actors replace blanks in a gun with real bullets;
  • Sarah Shankman: Say You’re Sorry — A terrible vengeance is exacted for a horror committed years before between two friends, one with money, and one without who is forced to follow the oldest profession to support herself;
  • Marilyn Wallace: A Tale of Two Pretties — A woman facing imprisonment finds a way out, another woman who could be her twin. Simple solution: pay the other woman to just change lives until the imprisonment is over. And the other woman is willing because she’s looking at waiting for her lover to get out of prison himself, and she can’t stand being alone. Something about the best laid plans though;
  • Carolyn Wheat: Life, For Short — A woman in the hospital wants to die, and an angel-of-death orderly on a mercy mission stalks the hospital. Will they meet before its too late? Or will they meet too early? A little darker ending; and,
  • Joyce Carol Oates: Extenuating Circumstances — This is a strange story, both in tone and in format. The story is a list of reasons that a woman has left her husband so he will know why she did some nasty deeds. Somewhat disturbing.

Other good ones in the collection include Mary Higgins Clark (Voices in the Coalbin — suicidal wife hears voices in the coalbin); Dorothy Cannell (The High Cost of Living — siblings against their step-mother); Sara Paretsky (The Maltese Cat — missing sister and her cat); Wendy Hornsby (Nine Sons — woman with nine boys is pregnant with 10th kid); Margaret Manon (Lieutenant Harald and the Impossible Gun — bullet from gun that has an alibi); Sharyn McCrumb (A Predatory Woman — reporter interfering with child murderer about to be paroled); and Dianne Mott Davidson (Cold Turkey — caterer with a body in her fridge).

What I Didn’t Like

A few of the stories are just not quite as good as the rest of the collection including Nancy Pickard (Afraid All The Time — skittish city girl living in the country); Marcia Muller (All the Lonely People — private-eye investigating dating service); Julie Smith (Blood Type — holographic wills and imminent deaths); Gillian Roberts (Hog Heaven — an aging but forgetful Romeo); Susan Dunlap (The Celestial Buffet — gourmands after death); Joan Hess (Too Much To Bare — woman wants revenge for cheating); Sue Grafton (A Poison That Leaves No Trace — death of a sister who competed with daughter); and Gabrielle Kraft (One Hit Wonder — ex-singer, now bartender, is tempted by couple up to no good).

The Bottom Line

Eclectic but solid collection.