Mystery Corner ~ 2

[mabel1015j]

 

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Pull up a comfortable chair and join us here to talk about mysteries and their authors.
 We love hearing what YOU enjoy and recommend!

Links:
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Our Favorite Old Mystery Writers
Fantastic Fiction
Stop You're Killing Me

Discussion Leader:    JoanK   

Pedln - yes.

[Steph]

There are small minority people all over the US.. Mostly in isolated corners which has changed how they feel..Actually,, the mennonite,amish, etc have many many individual sects in different places. I know the Amish where I grew up in Delaware are quite differen from the ones in Ohio and Indiana.

[Babi]

 Different in what ways, STEPH?  I would be curious to know how those arose, how the
separate groups came to be where they are. Are the different groups friendly, or hostile
over differences. I would appreciate any information you might have.  This is a subject that
has always interested me.

[pedln]

By some fluke, my f2f group (mostly mysteries) read two series mysteries about the Amish back-to-back  -- Kansas Troubles (Benni Harper) by Earleen Fowler and Sworn to Silence (Kate Burkholder) by Linda Castillo.  The Amish community in Fowler's appeared very strict and at times unforgiving.  In Castillo's, set in Ohio, they were much more supportive of banished family.  The Castillo was quite gruesome, I thought.

[MaryPage]

When I took a Senior bus tour of Lancaster County, PA some years ago (sponsored by the county), we picked up a guide up there who was a hoot and a half and she NEVER stopped talking.  She just had a small lace hanky on the top of her head, and otherwise was dressed in such a manner that you would never pick her out in a crowd, and I think she told us she was Free Mennonite.  Anyway, my point is to say that she told of us several degrees of Mennonite groups and what the difference was between them and the Amish and then went on to tell us how many differences there were between different Amish groups in the NorthEast.  She even had the bus take us by different places and show us.  For instance, she took us by a typical home that had no telephone or electricity, but down by the highway beside a gate was a wood colored box built almost exactly the size of one of our old telephone boxes you could stand in to make a call, except it had only a very small glass window on the front door, and THIS was where that farmer DID have a telephone.  "For emergencies!"
She pointed out that some use farm machinery and some still use horses and oxen.  Some will pile in a fleet of vans who are in business JUST for their business, and will be taken to some place (right here in Annapolis, for instance;  we have an Amish market Thursday morning through and until three on Saturday) and stay overnight in motels with phones and electricity and television, etc.  That way they do not break their religious law against driving!  They are driven by "pagans," but they do not drive!  She said there are those groups who meet only in their homes for religious services, and those who have houses of worship.  My head was swimming by the end of it, and I cannot for the life of me tell you which was which by name.  But, bottom line, if there is a disagreement over theology, a group will break off.  And thus has it ever been!  All of the major religions have done the same!

[MaryPage]

All in one moment, I can think of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox first breaking Christianity apart.  And Judaism is Orthodox, Conservative and Reformed;  mebbe more, I am not well informed on the matter.  And then came the Calvinists and the Lutherans and the Church of England, and we had Protestants.  Hindus have many, many different belief groups, and Islam has the Sunni, Shia, and Sufias, plus many, many more!  And they purely hate each other!  Like the Irish did for so very long, they will kill one another just for their being of a different branch of worship belief!

By the way, that is meant only as an historical reference.  My mother was almost pure Irish, and I feel quite Celtic, thank you very much.  History is history is history.

[mabel1015j]

My life experience growing up and as an adult showed me many of what i considered ridiculous differences and arguments, all leading to my being an agnostic today. My STRONG Calvinist Presbyterian Scotch-Irish maternal family believed in pre-destination, which i, even as a very young person, thought ridiculous! What GOD would play such a trick on it's "children" just to get people to behave so they would look like they were the ones who were going to heaven? And why should some people be "chosen" and some not? Just sounded like a people-made rationalization to me. Growing up in the "NO-DRINKING EVER" Methodist church of my father's heritege, i knew my Dad had his medicinal bottle of whiskey in the pantry, and i was STUNNED when visiting a Catholic college friend's family celebration of an ordination of a family member, seeing all the priests and nuns having their "nips" of alcohol.

My first close Jewish friend would eat bacon at the deli, but not in her house! My Catholic roommate was "seeing" her priest.........and on and on. I lived near Amish who had their emergency telephone house, would use wagons without rubber on the wheels!?!  Mennonites who drove black cars w/ no chrome on them.........none of it makes any sense to me.

Take heed, however, i do not judge those who can believe and am somewhat envious of those who get solace from their faith.

Jean

[MaryPage]

I agree with most of what you say, Jean, and sympathize with the rest, but I do have to tell you that it was the Methodist in you that was scandalized by the nuns and priests having their toddys, because they do not take vows not to drink.

My first husband was Catholic, and his family always had two bowls of punch at every party for any family celebration.  One end of the table held the Methodist punch and the other the Catholic punch.  Catholics just have never been teetotalers, and that's a fact!

There used to be a saying:
"Wherever a Catholic sun doth shine
You'll always find laughter and good red wine."

Only the children, those pregnant, and some few guests drank the Methodist punch.

I don't think the present generations offer punch at parties, do they?  Haven't seen it for years now!  Used to be at every wedding, birthday, baby shower, christening, anniversary:  you name it.  Every bride simply HAD to have a punch bowl in crystal with matching cups.  Mine was by Imperial and was called Candlewick, I think.  All those little beads around the edges?  Wasn't that it?

[Steph]

Oh Mary Page, I do laugh. Actually one of my daughter in laws has my punch bowl and adores it. She brings it out on holiddays and reminds me of it. Mine was crystal, very very plain on a pedestal. I have always been fond of plain.
Babi.Amish Mennonite and dunkerds.. All started out the same , but over the years, they split and split and many of them moved further away and things change. There are probably books written on the differences. Where I grew up, there was also Church of the Nazareene, which seemed to have the same restrictions on females that the others did.They wore a little organdy cap and always wore their hair in braids up.. and I always laughed because they had thave sleeves on their clothes, but they would make them of organdy, so they were see through. Religion varies so very very much.. I became a quaker since I cannot bear the thought of war and people killing one another. I think it deadens your mind and heart when you deliberatelytake another life.

[marjifay]

Jean said, "Take heed, however, i do not judge those who can believe and am somewhat envious of those who get solace from their faith."  Nice way to look at it, Jean.  But  I'm happy being an atheist.

"Only the children, those pregnant, and some few guests drank the Methodist punch."   Funny, MaryPage.

Marj

[Babi]

  Thanks, MARYPAGE, for that information. Your guide was an excellent one. I realized, at
some point, that we are rarely likely to find any religious group with whom we agree
100% on all the teachings. So there is little point in running from one to another,
unless you find yourself in a really sad/bad situation. It takes a while to learn that.
How much of my private thoughts I decide to share would depend entirely on how receptive
a group might be to raising questions.

 I get great solace from my faith, JEAN. I just don't let it get bogged down in the
idiocies of various religious groups. Some people simply need some clear-cut, hard and
fast rules that they can follow and feel their salvation is assured. They are seemingly
unwilling or unable to dig into the demands of soul-searching.  Remember Jesus
chastising the Pharisees for so precisely tithing their herbs, but neglecting more
important things, like justice and mercy?

 Still have a punch bowl and cups, MARYPAGE. Haven't used it decades!

  STEPH, I was once drawn to the Quaker ideals.  Their quiet worship and prayer, and
history of social conscience, appealed to me.  Unfortunately, my first visit to a Quaker
meeting was not felicitous.  Early on, a woman exercised her right to speak and stood up
to pray.  And prayed, and prayed, and prayed....    I wondered if she was getting her
months prayers caught up!  I took a quick peek at their leader, and he was noticeably
uncomfortable, embarassed, and cast a quick glance at me to see how I was tolerating this.
Not well, as I imagine he saw. I did not return.  Unfortunate? Or perhaps just not the
road God wanted me to take.

[marjifay]

Has anyone read GONE GIRL by Gillian Flynn?  I just finished it.  Wow, what an imagination that author has!  Starts out kind of slow, but I got so engrossed in it I couldn't put it down.  (Not a cozy which people here seem to prefer, but no gore)

Marj

[JoanK]

"Not a cozy which people here seem to prefer, but no gore"

I hope we haven't become too cozy-centered. I admit, I read more cozies than other genres, but certainly not exclusively. And I also admit I prefer mysteries written by women where the detective is a woman. But I hope I'm not pushing the discussion too much in that direction. There's a wide variety out there.

[MaryPage]

I love Margaret Maron and her Deborah Knott series because the fibers of her mind work in sync with my own wiring and because her books are modern and up to date, which keeps me Here and not in the past.  It is not that I do not love History;  History is, in fact, the great passion of my life. 

I have googled them and found the shops and businesses Maron describes Deborah going to, except the ones concerning a murder, are REAL.  Fun!  I would dearly love to be able to go to the Cotton Exchange in Wilmington, North Carolina and visit Caravan Beads, for instance.  And those potteries!  Oh, oh, oh, to spend a day touring those!

[Steph]

I do love authors who write about their area and you could use them as a road map.Actually I think that elderhostel does a Tony Hillerman tour to places he talks of out west..
Robert Parker is super as a Boston and Cambridge map and Sara Paretsky has Chicago down to a Tee..It makes it fun when you visiit a place and can say..oh me,, i read about that.

[maryz]

Steph, we've taken an Elderhostel with Hillerman as one of the subjects.  Even before that, we've followed most of the roads in his books (with the trusty Auto Club Indian Country map in hand), and found many of the obscure places.  Love the books, the territory, and the people.

[JoanK]

With Hillerman's books, you can feel every bump in the roads. Somehow, the TV series based on them didn't have that strong sense of place. Robert Redford was a great director in the movies he did, but I was disappointed in the Hillerman series. (But maybe the strong feeling that Hillerman has for the land just doesn't translate to another person).

[Steph]

I think that Hillermans love for the country and the tribes shines through and that is hard to do with TV and the star system.

[pedln]

MaryPage, Sea Grove, NC has been on my Bucket List for years, ever since Margaret Maron wrote Uncommon Clay.  Lots of folk art and pottery there.  I like the way she focuses sometimes on a particular industry or business.  I don’t remember the title, but it was a mystery about the furniture business, set in High Point, NC.

Marjifay, I haven’t read it yet, but Gone Girl is on my list.  It’s been talked about a lot this past summer and fall.  I was glad to see your positive review.

Steph, the locations and settings can make or break a mystery for me.  Sue Henry in Alaska, Susan Duncan in the Bay Area.  And who write the Homer Kelly series – they’re mostly around Harvard Yard, but sometimes elswhere.  Jane Langton?

[mabel1015j]

Was it Killer Market, Pedln? I remember reading that one too, but i just keep a list of titles, no comments. I just wanted a little notebook i could carry in my pocket to the library so i wouldn't get books i'd already read, so just room for titles.  I like those specialty books of Maron's  also.

Am reading a good J.D.Robb - Memory in Death. A women who had been Eve's foster parent just after she was put in the system as a child comes to NYC to try to get some money from Roarke! Ha! You can guess how well that works. I had gotten tired of Robb for a while but this one has less gore and sex and seems to be a good story.

Jean

[JoanK]

" And who write the Homer Kelly series – they’re mostly around Harvard Yard, but sometimes elswhere.  Jane Langton?"

Yes. And the neat thing about Langton's mysteries is that they always follow in plot either a work of art, a piece of classical music (e.g.Handel's massiah), a book (e.g. Dante's inferno) or a place (e.g. Montecello).

The last one I read was based on the paintings of Escher. Since I'm a big Escher fan, I was really disappointed that it wasn't a good book.
 

[pedln]

Hmmm, JoanK.  I like Escher, but you say it wasn't a good book. Will think about that one. I don't remember the title of the last Homer Kelly book I read, but it wasn't in Boston, and I was very disappointed with Mary Kelly.

[Babi]

  Ah, another area of ignorance in my life.  I must go explore Escher, a painter whose name is
totally new to me.

[MaryPage]

I first learned about Escher decades ago while in a posh store buying ties for my husband.  The ties fascinated me, so I found out all I could about him.  At that time.  Ask me now, and I don't know much!

[Steph]

I have a son who adores all forms of math and so Escher is a hero of his.. So.. way back when he was in college, we explored Escher,Godel..etc and loved it.. Been a while though.

[JoanK]

My father (a mathematician) met Escher, before he was famous. He had a chance to buy a painting from him and didn't.

I just gave PatH a jigsaw puzzle of one of his paintings. If I'd looked more closely, I wouldn't have: it looks impossible!

[JoanK]

Here is Escher in a nutshell:

http://www.mcescher.net/

You can see why he appeals to mathematicians.

[Frybabe]

I have an art book of his paintings. They appealed to my early interest in psychology and perception.

[Babi]

I did look up Escher, and really enjoyed seeing examples of his work. Everything I saw
looked like etchings, and were all black and white, but gorgeous. I especially loved the
one where the swimming ducks merged into flying birds. 
  JOANK, I can well imagine a jigsaw  of an Escher would be way too difficult for
me to tackle. Unless, maybe, the pieces were odd shapes. 

 Psychology and perception.  I've never 'studied' it,  but I have considered the impact
of perception on how people form opinions and develop biases..for or against.  What
did you find in the subject that interested you most, FRYBABE?

[Steph]

 Yes, I did discover that Math people adore him.. There are still reproductions of his paintings all over my sons house.He and his wife are both engineer and genuine math freaks..

[Frybabe]

I discovered that I was more interested in how the sensory mechanisms worked than the psychological aspects. Optical illusions are interesting in how they can trick the senses into interpreting something else. But I think it is the studies of brain "mis-wires" or damage in regards to color, sound, taste and smell crossovers that I find most fascinating. If I were following things more closely these days, I'd say the differences in eye witness accounts of an event would prove most interesting. Now you have me wondering how much a person's psychological makeup, personality, and experience go into how someone interprets what happens. All this makes me wonder about   eye-witness accounts in history.

[Babi]

FRYBABE, I do believe all those things play a role what we 'see', in our interpretation
of it. That's one reason it's a bad idea to place too much reliance on first impressions.
The poor soul may not be at all the person you thought they were on first meeting. Your
comment re. eye-witness accounts in history reminded me of the very wise injunction in
the Bible, that two or three witnesses were required to 'establish' any fact. If you
only have one witness, confirmation would definitely be needed.

 And of course in recording history, a great deal would depend on which side of the
event the author supported, wouldn't it?  Or how much he wanted to be in the good
graces of the victors? 

[Steph]

Yes, I try to remember that all history is recorded by the victors..

[Frybabe]

My monthly mystery newsletter from the library lists two books worth mentioning here (IMO).

The first is The Cocktail Waitress by James M. Cain. This is listed as Noir Fiction. The only reason I am mentioning it is that Mr. Cain died back in 1977. This is, according to the newsletter, a previously unpublished novel that was discovered among his papers.

The second is more to my liking even though it is a dog and not a cat that is the co-protagonist -
A Fistful of Collars: A Chet and Bernie Mystery by Spencer Quinn. Here is what the newsletter says about it.

Charmingly (but certainly not cloyingly) narrated by loveable Bernie, a K9-school dropout (there might have been an incident with a cat), A Fistful of Collars finds the dog and his perpetually down-on-his-luck human detective, Chet Little, getting more trouble than they bargained for while babysitting a partying actor whose latest film, a western, is being shot in the Valley. Not only do several murders occur, but the doggie/human duo uncover links between the thespian and a long-ago local crime. This 5th Chet and Bernie book is "a fine entry in a not-to-be-missed series" (Booklist); newcomers can start here, but those who like to begin at the beginning will want to fetch Dog On It.

[Frybabe]

Just added this to my Kindle from Project Gutenberg - The White Rose of Memphis by William C. Falkner. It is a murder mystery set on a steamboat from what I gather. Falkner was William Faulkner's grandfather.

[Steph]

Wow... Faulkner came from a writing family.Who knew??
I am reading an older Robert Parker that I missed the first time around..Still working so hard on trying to get the house ready for the realtor that I am not reading much.

[marjifay]

I'd forgotten until you mentioned it, Frybabe, that I have James Cain's COCKTAIL WAITRESS on my TBR list (along with a zillion other books, LOL)  The book desc. says "Following her husband's death in a suspicious car accident, beautiful young widow Joan Medford is forced to take a job serving drinks in a cocktail lounge to make ends meet.  At the job she encounters two men who take an interest in her, a handsome young schemer who makes her blood race and a wealthy but unwell older man who rewards her for her attentions with a $50,000 tip and an unconventional offer of marriage."

Sounds a bit like the plot for his Postman Always Rings Twice, doesn't it?  You can just about predict what's going to happen.  Cain wrote some good noir, including Mildred Pierce and Double Indemnity.

Marj

[marjifay]

Interesting about Wm. Falkner's grandfather's book, Frybabe.  Amazon says it's 536 pp.
I wonder if he's as difficult to read as his grandson.  The only book by Wm. Falkner I was able to finish was his INTRUDER IN THE DUST, a whodunit set, of course, in the south.  Very good book, as was the 1949 film made from it.

Marj

[Frybabe]

Oops! Faulkner's GREAT-Grandfather. Here is a bio.

http://www.olemiss.edu/mwp/dir/falkner_william_clark/index.html

Check out the remarks about the name spelling. Weren't we always told that the spelling Faulkner was a misspelling somewhere along the line and that he kept it?

Also, I didn't know that William Faulkner had a younger brother, John, who was also a writer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Faulkner_%28author%29

[JoanK]

There was certainly a writing gene in the Falkner family.

The Spencer Quinn books sound familiar: I;m sure I've read one, but can't remember which.

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/q/spencer-quinn/