Digital Sextant

Death of the Mantis

by Michael Stanley

This third book in the Detective Kubu series finds our favorite portly member of Botswanna CID called in to help investigate a murder committed on the edge of the Kalahari.  When the Bushmen who find the body become suspects in the murder, Kubu’s old school friend calls him in to help make sure the aboriginal men get fair treatment at the hands of the often-racist government.   A few thoughts:

• Once again, the authors (Michael Stanley is pseudonym for two men) do a great job immersing the reader in the world of Botswanna.  In this episode, we learn about the myths, beliefs, and philosophy of the Bushmen, as well as a few facts about life in the desert.  The novelists do a good job presenting the conflicts between the Bushmen and the Botswannan government, a classic conflict that echoes the British-Australian/Australian Aborigine or Native American/European-American conflicts.
• Kubu’s home life continues to be an excellent part of the story.  I still think they overdo it with the intense description of the food he eats, but such is the nature of Kubu as a character.  But his relationship to his wife (named Joy) and his new daughter make for both more stress (as any baby introduced to the family will) and pressure him to step up and think about the relationship between his job and his family.  This section of the book rung especially true for me as I was just leaving on a trip myself and feeling a little guilty about my wife having to handle the kids on her own.
• We also see, in Kubu’s and Joy’s parents, the interweaving of old and new life in Botswanna.  In particular, the pressure on Kubu’s step-sister to marry becomes  a plot point, and the negotiation for a bride price, set in number of cows, makes for an amusing and interesting diversion.
• The side characters in the novel are really compelling.  One of the suspects is a white man from Namibia who finds himself under attack while roaming the desert on vacation.  His character is revealed slowly, and the authors do a great job pulling those pieces together.  The same goes for Cindy, a freelance reporter who gets involved in the case in order to prod the Botswanna police to watch the watchmen.
• The mystery itself is well-wrought as well.  My book club generally agreed that it felt organic and unforced, yet still sufficiently complicated to be interesting.  A moderate cast of characters means the reader has plenty to speculate about, yet the novel also develops the story in a way that doesn’t feel like a single piece of evidence could have pointed the finger at one or another of the suspects.

A good read, overall.  Solid characters, an organic mystery, and plenty of local color.

See also: A Carrion Death

The Siamese Twin Mystery

by Ellery Queen

I’ve read a few Ellery Queen short stories before, but this is my first EQ novel.  The authors behind Queen were two cousins named Frederick Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee, but the stories, books, and magazines are written as if he’s a real person who writes mysteries and works with his father, a police detective, to solve mysteries.  The Siamese Twin Mystery opens with Queen and the Inspector (the affectionate title used for Queen’s father) driving hopelessly along some godforsaken mountain road when they discover their paths blocked in every direction by a raging forest fire.  In desperation, they drive up an access road to the top of the mountain, where they encounter a grim manor house filled with spiteful people.  Before long, there’s a murder, and with the fire blocking the way back down the mountain, only Queen and Queen can solve the crime.  A few thoughts:

• Like many detective stories from the golden age, The Siamese Twin Mystery turns on odd little clues and twisty logic.  The convoluted and tortured mental processes Ellery and the Inspector use to wrest data from a victim’s handedness and a torn playing card gets more astounding by the minute.  In the end, it makes “sense,” but also seems pretty darn awkward. (Check out the SPOILERS section at the end of this review for more on this aspect of the story.)
• The writing is descriptive and zesty, with punchy dialogue and witty banter between Ellery and his father.  That said, it doesn’t have the memorable syntax of Chandler or Hammett.
• 

  Boteler and Quillan in The Mandarin Mystery

  This novel reminded me quite a bit of The Mandarin Mystery, an Ellery Queen movie I’ve used a number of times in my Literary Genres: Detective Fiction course.  Both stories use the trapped group dynamic–in the film, the five suspects are trapped in the penthouse suite of an hotel where a man was murdered over a rare stamp called the Chinese Mandarin.  The biggest effect of the film was to influence my ideas about what Ellery and his father look and sound like.  In the film, Eddie Quillan plays Queen as a bit of a dandy, wielding charm as well as a gun. Wade Boteler plays the Inspector as a gruff and grumpy straight man to Queen’s smart aleck.

• Over the course of the novel, the mystery is complicated by the rising fire surrounding the mansion.  Not only does this intensify the tension everyone is feeling and make for some good action scenes, it also provides a natural excuse for the manor house mystery.
• The novel was originally published in 1933, roughly five years after the very popular The Magic Island, the travel book about Haiti that made the term zombie common and helped introduce the figure to Hollywood.  At one point late in the novel, the characters are moving to shelter, having been covered in ash and dirt from trying to fight the fire burning its way up the mountain.  Check it out:
  

  “The Cellar,” they changed obediently, fixing glassy eyes on his face. They were a company of half-naked dead, dirty white Zombies in a purgatory of their own.  “The cellar.”

• The people in the mansion are high-society snobs, each with their own foibles.  We learn fairly early in the novel that the owner of the mansion, Dr. Xavier, has been running scientific experiments to sever conjoined animals.  His wife, brother, and some patients (including another Doctor named Sherlock Holmes in homage to the character, but without any of his famous namesake’s bravery or cunning) seem to be loafing around simmering with hatred.  We also meet the creepy butler (named Bones), the maternal housekeeper, and a disgusting toad-like man flushed out by the fire.  Finally, the title characters are a pair of teenage boys conjoined at the hip, hidden in shame at the mountain-top retreat by their mother and discovered through an eerie scene that makes them seem like some sort of monster.

Overall, it’s not a bad golden age mystery.  Over the next decade or so I expect I will slowly read a bunch of these golden age books, as I have around a hundred of them in my office, passed along by a retiring colleague.  They’re mostly John Dickson Carr and Carter Dickson, but there are a few Ellery Queen and other similar novels among the stacks.

SPOILERS: The subtitle on the copy of the book I have accurately describes the novel’s twists when it declares “Ellery Queen solves two murders three times before ending The Siamese Twin Mystery.”  What’s odd is that these solutions turn on the same couple bits of evidence, tortured into different scenarios by the author and circumstances.  As with many such novels, the confrontation is the only proof they have, and the killer confesses rather than keeping their clam shut.