Short Story Wednesday: Short Story Books from My Husband's Shelves

Today I feature three books of short stories that I plan to be reading from in the next few months. All of them are from my husband's shelves, and he has not read them yet either. 

Night and Fear: A Centenary Collection of Stories by Cornell Woolrich

This collection of 14 previously uncollected stories was published in 2004. The reviews at both Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus said these are not his best stories, but there were good reviews at Goodreads, so I am sure the stories will be worth my time. Edited and with an Introduction by Francis M. Nevins.

Killer, Come Back to Me: The Crime Stories of Ray Bradbury

As noted in the subtitle, this book collects crime stories by Ray Bradbury. Bradbury wrote three crime novels in 1985, 1990, and 2002, but most of his short stories were in other genres. About half of the stories in this book are from the 1940s, and the others are from later decades. This book has a very nice cover and includes illustrations preceding some of the stories. 

There is an introduction by Jonathan R. Eller. At the end, there is an essay by Ray Bradbury that was intended to be an introduction to A Memory of Murder, a collection of crime stories published in 1984. This seems appropriate since a good number of stories that were in A Memory of Murder are in this book. 

Speculative Los Angeles

Edited by Denise Hamilton

Fourteen speculative short stories set in neighborhoods around Los Angeles. The stories are divided into four sections: "Changelings, Ghosts, and Parallel Worlds," "Steampunks, Alchemists, and Memory Artists," "A Tear in the Fabric of Reality" and "Cops and Robots in the Future Ruins of LA." Denise Hamilton was also the editor for Los Angeles Noir and Los Angeles Noir Volume 2: The Classics published by Akashic.

This is reportedly the first book in a new series of speculative fiction anthologies from Akashic Books.

Dia de los Muertos / Sugar Skull by Denise Hamilton

History of Day of the Dead ~ Dia de los Muertos

The following information is from MexicanSugarSkull.com.

Day of the Dead is an interesting holiday celebrated in central and southern Mexico during the chilly days of November 1 & 2. Even though this coincides with the Catholic holiday called All Soul's & All Saint’s Day, the indigenous people have combined this with their own ancient beliefs of honoring their deceased loved ones.

They believe that the gates of heaven are opened at midnight on October 31, and the spirits of all deceased children (angelitos) are allowed to reunite with their families for 24 hours. On November 2, the spirits of the adults come down to enjoy the festivities that are prepared for them.

Mexico, abundant in sugar production and too poor to buy fancy imported European church decorations, learned quickly from the friars how to make sugar art for their religious festivals. Clay molded sugar figures of angels, sheep and sugar skulls go back to the Colonial Period 18th century.

There is a lot of information at that site. Please check it out. The FAQ page has information on how sugar skulls are made and about the Day of the Dead.

Sugar Skull, the second book by Denise Hamilton featuring Eve Diamond, LA Times reporter, starts out a few days before Dia de los Muertos. The celebration features prominently in the plot.

The review at Publisher's Weekly provides a good overview:

[F]eisty Los Angeles Times reporter Eve Diamond is anxious to advance from the Valley to a more prestigious desk downtown. She gets her chance when, while writing the roundup of weekend murders, she's confronted by a man frantic to find his runaway daughter. Then the nude body of beautiful socialite Venus Della Viglia Langdon, wife of mayoral candidate Carter Langdon III, turns up in the couple's pool. These two seemingly unconnected occurrences reverberate across the vast urban sprawl that is home to one of the country's most diverse populations. The Mexican Day of the Dead festivities are in progress, and the little sugar skulls given to mark the occasion appear in the strangest places. Eve is soon immersed in the down and dirty worlds of runaways, a high-powered political campaign and the exploding Latin music scene—and caught up in a torrid affair with Silvio Aguilar, son of a music-industry tycoon and Venus's brother.

What I liked:

• The depiction of Los Angeles and surrounding areas.
• The portions of the story that dealt with teenage runaways.
• The portrayal of a strong female character with flaws.
• The pacing. Kept me entertained and interested.
• Not cozy at all but not depressing or downbeat either.

I enjoyed reading this book mainly due to its depiction of LA: the culture, politics, crime, and the Mexican-American community. And I think that part of it is excellent. The author lived there, she grew up there, and she was a reporter for many years. Yet, I have a hard time connecting with Eve Diamond and her propensity for getting involved with the people she interviews for stories. I have never found journalists as sleuths a very believable scenario. Nevertheless, I plan to read all of the Eve Diamond books.

The first book in the series, Jasmine Trade, is about "parachute kids," the rich Asian teens who live alone in California while their parents run businesses in Hong Kong. Last Lullaby is set in the world of international adoptions and drug smuggling. Savage Garden explores the theater scene. The fifth book in the series, Prisoner of Memory, is set among L.A.’s Russian immigrant community. I think all of those topics are going to be interesting.

I am fascinated by Denise Hamilton's background and how she has used it in her books and shared her knowledge of LA.

From an interview at The New Mystery Reader:

I’m a first generation American. My mother was a Russian/French immigrant and we spoke French at home. My husband’s parents were immigrants. His mother lives with us and we speak Spanish at home because she’s more comfortable with that language. So a multicultural, multi-ethnic society is second nature to me. Plus living in LA, in a suburb that is majority minority -- heavily Armenian, Russian, Korean and Latino  -- it just feels right. As to poverty, we didn’t have much money and I had academic scholarships all through school or I wouldn’t have made it, so I know that world too, though certainly not the dire poverty of some of my characters. Still, it’s never escaped me that so many people on this planet struggle just to survive, and that our materialistic society often overlooks these people, at least in popular culture. I know that what I write is popular culture – if my books don’t entertain you and keep you up way past your bedtime, then I haven’t done my job. But while I’m writing page-turners, I’m also interested in talking about marginal characters whose struggle is utterly compelling to me, whether it’s caused by poverty, race, class, ethnicity, crime or a mixture of these.

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Publisher:   Scribner, 2003 
Length:       295 pages
Format:       Hardcover
Series:        Eve Diamond #2
Setting:       Southern California
Genre:        Mystery
Source:       I purchased my copy.

Photo by Nathaniel C. Sheetz at Wikipedia Commons. 

500th Post! More Skulls and Skeletons

For my 500th post, I thought I would celebrate by featuring one of my favorite things... mysteries with skulls or skeletons on the cover. Only one of the books in this post has been featured on the blog before, and my goal is to read all of these by the end of the year.

Murder Sunny Side Up is the first book in a series about Congressman Ben Safford. The series was written by Emma Lathen under the pseudonym R. B. Dominic. At least ten years ago, I discovered the existence of this series. Being a big fan of the other books by Emma Lathen, I searched for books in the series. This book was very hard to find at a reasonable price, but my wonderful and dedicated husband found it (and three others in the series) at a used book store in the San Jose area.

Emma Lathen was the  joint pseudonym of Mary Jane Latsis, an economist, and Martha B. Henissart, a lawyer. From Whodunit? A Who's Who in Crime & Mystery by Rosemary Herbert:

The pair introduced their most famous character, John Putnam Thatcher, executive vice president of Sloan Guaranty Trust, in Banking on Death (1961). During a thirty-six-year collaboration, they portrayed Thatcher as using business savvy and urbane wit to investigate mysteries in a variety of business settings. In Murder Sunny Side Up (1968), under the joint pseudonym R. B. Dominic, they introduced another popular series character, Congressman Ben Safford. Safford solves crimes mostly set in Washington, D.C. The success of both series had much to do with the authors' ability to make readers feel like insiders in the worlds they depicted.

I have read three of the seven books in the Ben Safford series. I have copies of all of them.

There are seven mystery novels starring Masao Masuto, a Japanese-American detective in the Beverly Hills Police Department who grows roses and practices Zen meditation. The mysteries were written by Howard Fast,using the pseudonym E. V. Cunningham.The first was The Case of the Angry Actress (1967, originally published as Samantha). I enjoyed the first book in the series mostly because of the setting (Southern California), the time period it was written in, and the political and social commentary.

The last book in the series was The Case of the Murdered Mackenzie (1984).  Since it came 17 years later, it will be interesting to see how it compares.

Andrew Macdonald discusses Masuto in Howard Fast: A Critical Companion:

The detective hero Masuto combines Buddhist meditation with Holmesian ratiocination to make intuitive leaps of both reason and imagination that leave his colleagues and superiors puzzling over the assumptions that further investigation, physical evidence, and testimony confirm. The close observation that allows the Buddhist in Masuto to see beauty where others see ugliness also allows him to see the mundane, the corrupt, and the repulsive behind the beautiful facade of Beverly Hills. These stories look at the wealthy California scene from the perspective of an outsider, racially, culturally, and economically. Masuto can bring Asian perceptions to unraveling the mysteries of his adopted community and counters the mainstream disintegration of family values with his own deep-seated commitment to home and family.

I have had Fender Benders over ten years. The edition I bought was a trade paperback with skeleton playing the guitar. I don't think I bought the book just for the cover, but this book is clearly humorous and that is not strictly my kind of mystery. Maybe I was trying to broaden my horizons.

Author description at Amazon:

Bill Fitzhugh was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. He has also lived in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Seattle, Washington, and Los Angeles. He writes satiric crime novels, the occasional comic mystery, and for five years, wrote, produced and hosted "Fitzhugh's All Hand Mixed Vinyl" for the Deep Tracks channel of Sirius-XM Satellite Radio.

Story synopsis from the author's site:

Fender Benders is set primarily in Nashville. The backdrop is the country music industry. The story was originally going to be in the pop/rock music industry set in Los Angeles, but my agent kept telling me to do something set in the south, so I guess this is it. Suffice it to say there are some murders, some attempted murders, and some other nefarious activities. Oh, and lots of fried food.

I bought the hardcover edition above (for the cover of course) at the Planned Parenthood book sale last year.

A year and a half ago I purchased Sugar Skull (2003) by Denise Hamilton at the Planned Parenthood book sale. Sugar Skull is the second in a five book series about Eve Diamond, a journalist in the Los Angeles area. Recently I read and reviewed the first book, The Jasmine Trade, and I hope to read this book before the end of 2015.

Review at Publisher's Weekly:

In Edgar finalist Hamilton's (The Jasmine Trade) passionate new puzzle, feisty Los Angeles Times reporter Eve Diamond is anxious to advance from the Valley to a more prestigious desk downtown. She gets her chance when, while writing the roundup of weekend murders, she's confronted by a man frantic to find his runaway daughter. Then the nude body of beautiful socialite Venus Della Viglia Langdon, wife of mayoral candidate Carter Langdon III, turns up in the couple's pool. These two seemingly unconnected occurrences reverberate across the vast urban sprawl that is home to one of the country's most diverse populations. The Mexican Day of the Dead festivities are in progress, and the little sugar skulls given to mark the occasion appear in the strangest places. Eve is soon immersed in the down and dirty worlds of runaways, a high-powered political campaign and the exploding Latin music scene—and caught up in a torrid affair with Silvio Aguilar, son of a music-industry tycoon and Venus's brother. The tenacious Eve discovers that even the most twisted and distant paths can converge, that very little separates the privileged from the desperate and that it's all-too-easy to step over the line of journalistic ethics, become part of the story and maybe wind up dead.

The Jasmine Trade: Denise Hamilton

Introduction to the novel at the author's web site:

Everything was set. Marina Lu had even ordered designer dresses for the eight bridesmaids who, in several months' time, would have preceded her down the aisle at her painstakingly planned, storybook wedding. But Marina lies dead, alone in her shiny status car, a two-carat diamond engagement ring refracting nothing but another abruptly shattered Los Angeles dream. Was her death merely a carjacking gone bad? Or is there more to the story? 

Marina is Los Angeles Times reporter Eve Diamond's chilling introduction to "parachute kids," the rich Asian teens who live alone in California while their parents run businesses in Hong Kong. Delving into the mysteries surrounding Marina's life and death, Eve stumbles upon a world of unmoored youth and an even more tragic subculture where young immigrants live in virtual slavery.

I initially had some problems with this book. The first half was too slow. I consider the themes very interesting, yet the story was not grabbing my interest. In addition, I don't usually enjoy mysteries featuring amateur sleuths, and journalists fit into that sub-genre in my opinion.  I haven't read a lot of series with journalists as heroines or heroes, so I was trying to broaden my horizons.

Yet, when I hit the midpoint of the book, the story picked up and I got more comfortable with the characters. I liked the picture of Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley. Hamilton does an excellent job of depicting the cultural diversity of the area and how it affects life in Southern California. Especially in a big city like L.A.

I read one review that liked the story over the development of character; another reviewer stressed that the characters were good but the plot was lacking. So I guess it depends on who is reading the book. I felt that both improved toward the end of the book and that it was a fine effort for a debut novel. There are four other books featuring Eve Diamond. I will be continuing the series to see where it takes her.

This novel also get extra points for being a mystery novel written by a woman with a strong female protagonist. Denise Hamilton is clearly drawing on her own experiences as a journalist for the LA Times; see this essay at her web site.

This post by Maxine at Petrona gives a good overview of Denise Hamilton's books and suggests three other authors with series that feature journalists.

 -----------------------------

Publisher:   Scribner, 2001 
Length:       279 pages
Format:       Hardcover
Series:        Eve Diamond #1
Setting:       Southern California
Genre:        Mystery
Source:       I purchased my copy.