The Untouched Crime by Chinese author, Zijin Chen, is the result of my first BL-opoly roll; having never read a mystery novel set in China, I was excited to try this one. The book starts off with the discovery of a dead body, and for the officers working the case, it is easy to tell that the unfortunate man is the fifth victim of the serial killer they have been hunting over a three-year period.  

“Every detail is exactly the same as the last four cases. The weapon was found in the grass about five hundred yards away from the body. It was a jump rope, like those used for PE class. There were fingerprints on the wooden handles. The killer attacked from behind, strangling his victim with the rope. Once dead, he put a Liqun cigarette in the victim’s mouth and left a white piece of paper with the words ‘Come and get me’ printed on it. We have already collected that evidence.”

While The Untouched Crime is categorized as a mystery on Goodreads, I don't consider it to be so; or maybe I should say that the mystery I got is not the mystery I expected or was hoping for. By a quarter way through, the mystery element was all but gone as you could tell fairly easily who the serial killer was, though the motivation was still unclear.

After the fifth victim is discovered, there is another death and another team investigating. Soon enough the two teams join up, and the book seems to fizzle not long after that. What comes next between the character groups is mostly repetitive, one going over and over mostly the same investigative ground or the other discussing again and again how to delude the police.

In addition to this repetition, the book is heavy on dialogue which is quite wooden; it lacks emotion and reads like a dubbed low-budget action movie (minus the action =P). It also could do with more editing; I don't remember actual typos but there are sentence construction issues. To be fair, this is a translated work, so maybe that accounts for some of it.

While not as exciting as I was hoping it to be, the ending was unexpected, which salvaged the book just a little. Not that I liked the ending, but the fact that it even managed to surprise me after everything else counts for something.

Glass Houses begins in the present, with Gamache on the witness stand at a murder trial. The story moves back and forth between this trial and the recent past (eight months earlier) when the events leading to the murder occurred.

These events began with a mysterious figure, dressed all in black – robes, hood, mask, gloves, boots, the whole works – shows up in Three Pines. No one knows who it is and, legally, Gamache can take no action to make the person move on. The unknown individual’s identity is so obscured by the disguise and their presence so menacing, the villagers have taken to thinking of him/her as Death.

Indeed, the whole book seems to be about death: death in the past, death in the present, and deaths that will occur in the future.

“That thing is here because someone in the village doesn’t have a quiet conscience.”

While more revelations and research shed light on the figure or, more accurately, what its presence represents, everyone is still in the dark as to who it may have come for.

Then there is the murder.

From the start, the story is dark and obscure and remains that way for about one-third of the book, around which time a body is discovered and the victim revealed. Even then, you don’t know who is on trial until much later on.

In many ways, while connected, the murder is secondary to the real issue at hand, a problem being fought by Gamache and his team. He is fighting a war he is determined to win. There is plenty of subterfuge going around and Gamache is in the thick of it with his own barely legal masterminding and manoeuvring. The murder is not Gamache’s main objective but he uses the circumstances and the trial as pawns in his war. While the means he uses seem the only way to win this war, the consequences can be devastating, even if he wins.

The book started out on a slow simmer, with the temperature climbing bit by bit after the first quarter. From there, it steadily builds up into a raging and shocking inferno. It was a different pace from usual but I enjoyed it, and I’m eager to know how the consequences arising from all that happened in Glass Houses play out in the next book, Kingdom of the Blind.

Full disclosure - this collection of stories turned out to be more of a reread, as the first 11 are already included in the Pistols for Two collection. I read the latter collection in 2012, so I hope it’s understandable when I say I barely remembered some of the stories.  This aside, they were all delightful romps as usual, with duels, thwarted elopements, incorrigible misses and, that Heyer mainstay, Nonpareils with their many-caped driving coats of white drab.

Have I mentioned yet this was a fun read? Before this collection, my last Georgette Heyer read was almost two years ago and I didn’t realize how much I’d missed her writing, with its exquisite detail and witty dialogue that just cracks me up :-)

Of all the Heyer novels and stories I know about, this collection is the only one I don't yet own. It first debuted at US$14.99 and now sells at US$9.99. As only three of the stories are new-to-me, I find it hard to justify buying the collection at that price. I'm (stubbornly) waiting patiently for a sale.

This is a collection of insightful and inspirational quotations from Martin Luther King, Jr’s (MLK) writings, sermons and speeches. Like any such collection, this is not an end-in-itself work but more of an opener for a deeper and more contextual dive into MLK’s life and work.

It’s a short collection, less than 20K words; the quotations take up about 55% of the book, with the rest of the space given over to Coretta Scott King’s introduction, a chronology of MLK’s life, and the Proclamation of MLK Day text.

The quotes are organized by subject headings, such as Racism, Peace, Civil Rights and the Community of Man; all are thought-provoking and some of my favourites are:

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, What are you doing for others?

 

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.

 

I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be.

 

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

 

A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.†

 

We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.

 

A doctrine of black supremacy is as evil as a doctrine of white supremacy.

 

The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason but with no morals.

 

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

 

There is so much frustration in the world because we have relied on gods rather than God.

 

St. Augustine was right—we were made for God and we will be restless until we find rest in Him.

 

The belief that God will do everything for man is as untenable as the belief that man can do everything for himself. It, too, is based on a lack of faith. We must learn that to expect God to do everything while we do nothing is not faith but superstition.

 († this quote brings to mind Socrates’ “an unexamined life is not worth living”)

The books mentioned in the chronology as authored by MLK are:

• Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (Sep 1958)
• Strength to Love (Jun 1963)
• Why We Can’t Wait (Jun 1964)
• Where Do We Go from Here? (Jan 1967)

Mary Roberts Rinehart is an author I've wanted to try for some time now and The Circular Staircase was a satisfying intro to her works. I like her writing style so far, tinged as it is with a little humour and irony.

"This is the story of how a middle-aged spinster lost her mind, deserted her domestic gods in the city, took a furnished house for the summer out of town, and found herself involved in one of those mysterious crimes that keep our newspapers and detective agencies happy and prosperous."

The Circular Staircase was a quick and enjoyable read; I started on a Saturday and was done by the following day. It was also a tea & blanket read (a phrase I've stolen without shame from BrokenTune) - I had the flu (now recovering) and it helped keep my mind off my misery, at least when I wasn't blowing my nose for the 1000th time :(

The opening quote from the first paragraph caps everything nicely. Like her fellow city dwellers do in the summer, Rachel Innes takes her household, which includes her niece and nephew, Gertrude and Halsey, and her maid, Liddy, to the country house of Sunnyside, leased from the Armstrong family, presently out in California; the two families are acquainted with each other.

From almost day one, there are strange happenings in and around the house, with someone (a woman?) lurking outside, and inexplicable noises inside. Soon after, a man is murdered on the circular staircase, leaving Rachel and company with none of the peace promised by the retreat to the country:

"The peace of the country-- fiddle sticks!"

Aside from the murder, someone (or some persons?!) is trying very hard to get into the house, and both Gertrude and Halsey are keeping secrets. And where does the Armstrong family fit in all this?

The reveal of the murderer was a bit anticlimactic for me; I had had my suspicions but the way it was revealed and tied up was so low-key. To be fair, though, the murder and its resolution turn out to be almost secondary to the more confounding mystery of who is trying to get into the house and why.

I like the character of Rachel Innes and wish I could meet up with her again in other Rinehart books - she is not shrinking or melodramatic, and I enjoyed her often-times contentious relationship with her maid, Liddy:

"Liddy and I often desire to part company, but never at the same time."

All in all, a good read and I will certainly carry on with Ms Rinehart - The Circular Staircase was plucked from a collection of 22 books, 17 of which are mysteries. We have ample opportunity to get acquainted ;)