When you can't decide where to go on vacation... not-so-Spring-Break reading!

A haphazard reading of multiple vacation-themed mysteries

by Michelle Souliere

Back at the beginning of the year, Sharon and I laid out a loose schedule of what we wanted to post about in the months ahead.  For the early spring, we planned to do a post with a “Spring Break” theme – something having to do with a tropical interval in a place far away from home.  We thought maybe we’d each pick a title and write something after reading our selections.

 

Well, things being what they are (i.e., crazy as usual!), that never panned out.  Sharon was juggling a long to-do list of projects for a new work position, and I was having problems finding books that fit the bill for what I really wanted the post to be.

Meep could care less about choosing between these!

I found a couple of titles that I thought would be perfect and turned out to be good, but still not quite right – however, I’m going to do a post about ‘em anyhow, because why the heck not?  And alongside them, I was reading a couple of books in series that I had already started, which wound up being much more in line with the feel I was looking for.  So I’ll talk about those too!

The two books I selected that weren’t a perfect match were both from the British Library Crime Classics series, which overall I am a huge fan of: Resorting to Murder: Holiday Mysteries (a short story anthology edited by Martin Edwards) and Death on the Riviera by John Bude.  Their cover art promised the setting I was looking for – sun, sand and leisure for folks from colder climes.

 

However, the contents were not that palmy (i.e., “palmy” as in its secondary meaning, “covered with palms”).

 

In Death on the Riviera, the French Riviera is the setting, but it almost feels like it is the off-season.  Some of the action weaves in and out of the resort restaurants and hotels at first, but most of it takes place on empty beaches, in alleyways far from the glitz, and in a private home, opulent and pleasant but otherwise the setting of mostly-normal household doings.  None of the characters are truly on vacation.

 

But the story is good, and some of the characters are truly charming.  Inspector Meredith and Acting-Sergeant Freddy Strang travel from Britain to team up with local Inspector Blampignon from Nice, in spite of language barriers, and manage to make headway in their search for the notorious forger, Chalky Cobbett.  Meanwhile, the case becomes entangled with all the folks living in the laid-back Villa Paloma, and things go horribly wrong.  Of course! 

 

A fun read, even though it wasn’t what I was looking for at the time.

 

Resorting to Murder lays out a buffet of fourteen short mysteries, all loosely associating them with holidays in one way or another.  Again, not so much the romance of the tropics here – this collection is quite Continental, with many of the getaways taking place in the mountainous regions of Europe, or rocky beaches, or simply the countryside.  

 

The authors include some heavy-hitters (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, G.K. Chesterton, R. Austin Freeman, Anthony Berkley, Michael Gilbert), and some ingenious mysteries.  However, the line-up feels a little stiff, with only two female authors included (Helen Simpson and Phyllis Bentley), and those placed towards the end of the book.  Regardless, it has mostly been a fun read, and would make a good vacation take-along, especially if you are headed for the mountains, moors, or the windblown shore. 

 

I still have a few stories left to go.  It has been a slow read, because I like to take a break between short stories and let my mental scene reset.  I did enjoy most of the stories, with the standouts so far being “The Vanishing of Mrs. Fraser” by Basil Thomson (which has a remarkably different ending) and “The Hazel Ice” by H.C. Bailey which features the strange and wonderful humor of his most famous sleuth, Reggie Fortune.  I’ll definitely be seeking more of Bailey’s stories featuring Fortune!  NOTE:  Another standout as I finished up the book was “The House of Screams” by Gerald Findler, an obscure little gem that’s almost more of a horror tidbit than mystery, short and shrieky.

 

Now – one step closer to what I was looking for is The Fleur de Sel Murders by Jean-Luc Bannalec, mystery #3 in his Brittany Mystery series featuring the charming and baffling Commissaire George Dupin.  Somehow I always associate seaside locations with a true vacation.  I won’t say much about the plot because I don’t want to give any spoilers, but instead will dwell on the setting.  While every single one of the Brittany-set books has charmed me with its beautiful landscape and characters, this one took place in a singular location – in and around the salt marshes of the Guérande peninsula.

 

Like many of the landscapes of Brittany, Guérande is remarkably idiosyncratic, as the “white land” where for centuries, even back to the Iron Age, sea salt has been harvested and cultivated in its finest forms.  Dupin enters the world of traditional paludiers, the men who tend the clay-bottomed pools where the salt crystals are painstakingly encouraged to form before their careful harvest occurs. 

 

The Salt Lands are, like much of the Breton world, a place of in-betweens, shifting in nature with the drastic changes of weather and climate customary in a seaside region, but holding a mysterious quality that in heavy doses might drive a person mad.  Labyrinthine, filled with milky white light and lavender sunsets over the flat reflecting pools, the Guérande exerts its spell.  And human beings, lured by its potency, its riches, and the power that comes with it all, will fight over it.  Again and again.

 

Dupin finds himself completely tangled in a web of intrigue and omissions of truth everywhere he steps.  Luckily, he always seems to find his way to a café with good coffee and food somewhere along the way, and the reader feels as satisfied as he does by the end.

 

This series simply breathes the most wonderful setting through your mind as you read them.  I highly recommend giving it a try!

 

And at last – fully plunged into the tropical theme comes our ringer, Death Knocks Twice by Robert Thorogood, the third book in the Death in Paradise series, set on the imaginary Caribbean island of Saint-Marie (I know it’s imaginary because after watching the TV show I looked it up and found myself seriously disappointed that I couldn’t visit it in real life – don’t worry, I am exploring other options!).

 

The ultimate duck-out-of-water, Detective Inspector Richard Poole finds himself investigating yet another convoluted affair in which someone has mysteriously gotten themselves offed.  Poole, constantly offended by the overly warm, bright, and laidback land in which he is stationed, is on the case.  He surprises himself a few times by an astonishing series of events in which he a) follows to one of his hunches, b) doesn’t completely follow the rulebook to procure a clue, and c) almost starts wearing shorts instead of a woolen suit.  All much to his island staff’s amusement and delight.

 

This series is delightful and at times ingenious, whether you’ve seen the television show or not.  I highly recommend both incarnations.  The adaptation is particularly good because of how well it is cast – the characters really come alive, and all their humor and pathos with them.  They have definitely helped me through a lot of dark days in the last few years!!!

 

Well, vacations must come to an end someday, and so does this post.  I hope you find some ideas for future reading in the books above, and whether you take them with you on a trip or simply dive into them in your favorite reading chair at home, they will take you on a journey in your mind to meet other people in other places, and expand your view of the world.