Tarquin Hall's The Case of the Missing Servant

When I saw the novel The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall at the library, I was torn. Obviously, I like mysteries and I like books set in India, but still, the concept made me nervous, partly because I feel slightly protective about books written about India--I want them to be good, and I worry that they might not be. It turns out that I had no reason at all to worry about this one. Hall has written an extremely entertaining novel, and his knowledge of India, and the way that tradition and modernity mingle and contradict each other, is extensive. He's also great with details and dialogue both; he has the rhythms and peculiarities of Indian-English sentences down perfectly.

Hall's detective is Vish Puri, proprietor of the Most Private Investigators, Ltd. Puri--known as Chubby to his family and friends--is a plump, rumpled, middle-aged Punjabi with a penchant for pakoras and a soft spot for safari suits and nicknames. (His assistants are known only as Handbrake, Face Cream and Flush.) Much of his business is taken up with routine matrimonial investigations, but when an honest (and seemingly innocent) Jaipur lawyer is accused of the murder of one of his housemaids, Puri takes the case.

While I enjoyed the mystery part of the story, I almost enjoyed more the details, especially of how Puri runs his business. I can't exactly say how realistic it is, but after reading/listening to many mysteries where the private investigator doesn't engage in anything wilder than a snack-food fueled stake out or the occasional car chase, I loved the complexity of Puri's operations. I love the idea, for example, that in his office (above Bahrisons book shop in Khan Market, where I've bought many books over the years) is a room with 9 phone lines, devoted solely to incoming calls from cases. Tending to the lines is a member of an amateur dramatic society from Greater Kailash who enjoys the job because it gives her time to knit in between answering the phones in different voices and (supposedly) from different locations. In another scene, Puri meets the proprietor of one of Delhi's most comprehensive costume shops. The old man outfits Puri as a Sikh, complete with turban and whiskers, but also supplies costumes for some of his assistants, including a fake mangled hand for one posing as a beggar.

Several reviews I read compared this to Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency novels, and it's true that both feature charming detectives in exotic locales. But in Puri, Tarquin Hall has created an endearing detective all his own. If the comparison gets him a wider readership, then I'm all for it, but the book is entertaining enough on its own not to need any coattails.

As with most mysteries, I listened to this one as an audio book, and I thought that Sam Dastor did a fabulous job narrating. Some of his inflections were so spot on that I thought of all of my various Delhi friends who speak exactly like that. The paper copy of the book, however, contains a glossary, which apparently includes definitions of all of the yummy food that Puri eats throughout the novel. (I don't know, however, if it includes all the Hindi swears that are in the book. I was pleased that I recognized at least a few. )

The next book in the series comes out in just a few weeks--The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing--and I'm already looking forward to it. I'll be happy to be back in Vish Puri's Delhi--in which I see enough of my Delhi to make me homesick--anytime.

The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag: The Return of Flavia deLuce

In my year-end roundup of books last December, I created a special category for Alan Bradley's first Flavia deLuce mystery, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie: "Best Audio Book I haven't finished listening to yet." A lame category title, admittedly, but I didn't want Bradley's first novel to go unrecognized (by me, at least). By the time I did finish it, in January 2010, I knew it would go on my best of the year list.

Bradley is a Canadian in his 70s, and Flavia is an 11-year-old chemistry fiend living in a dilapidated manor house called Buckshaw in Britain in 1950. No matter. In Flavia, Bradley has created a quirky and engaging narrator. At home, her father the philatelist is busy with his stamps, and her sisters are busy looking at themselves in the mirror (Feely) or burying their noses in a book (Daffy), and Flavia and her trusty bicycle Gladys are left to roam the lanes and fields around Bishop's Lacey at their leisure.

In the first book, the murder at the center of the story happens in Buckshaw's own cucumber patch. In the second, The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag, the murder is a just a bit farther afield. One day, while mooning around the graveyard at the church, pretending to be dead, Flavia comes across a beautiful woman weeping. Her name is Nialla, and she is puppeteer's assistant (and mistress) to Rupert Porson, of Porson's Puppets, whose van has broken down in Bishop's Lacey. At the urging of the vicar, Rupert and Nialla agree to perform several shows of "Jack and the Beanstalk" while their van is being fixed; Rupert, alas, does not survive both performances. From there, the story takes off, expanding to include, among other things, a secret crop grown in the midst of Gibbet Wood, the tragic death of a little boy some years earlier, and the story of a German POW who ended up in England because of his love of the Bronte sisters. Most of the main characters from the previous novel remain--Flavia's father and sisters as well as Dogger and Mrs. Mullet, who work for them at Buckshaw, along with Inspector Hewitt, with whom Flavia had previously tangled--but Bradley has expanded the circle outward so that we meet more of the residents of Bishop's Lacey--Gordon and Grace Inglesby, still mourning their lost son, Robin; Dieter Schranz, the handsome, Bronte-loving POW; land girl, Sally Straw; the absent-minded vicar and his battle-axe of a wife; and the spinster sisters who own the local tearoom, with its silver samovar named Peter the Great. And Flavia, as always, is at the center of it all.

Flavia may not always be the most plausible narrator, but she is always entertaining. I'm not sure I always believe that she's 11, but Bradley still walks the line gracefully, of what Flavia might or might not know. When she talks about Madame Bovary being one of her favorite books, it is because of the accurate portrayal of death by arsenic poisoning in the final scenes. At the same time, she feels the need to ask Dogger what "having an affair entails" because she's not quite sure of the specifics. I agree with the Material Witness blog review that one of the great joys of the first book was the sheer unexpectedness of Flavia as the narrator. The second book lacks the element of surprise, it's true, but that doesn't mean that Flavia still isnt' great company, whether she's in her chemistry lab devising a means to torment her sisters (who torment her in even crueler, though non-chemical, ways) or cozying up to various townspeople in order to wheedle information out of them or riding Gladys all over the countryside. Bradley has said that he would like to keep Flavia at 11, rather than having her age, and it's true that her status as a child allows her a freedom she would lack were she a teenager--not just the freedom to move around at will but also the ability to get away with snooping in a way that someone older couldn't. (At one point, when caught in the undertaker's back room, inspecting a dead body in a coffin for marks, Flavia pretends that she's been praying for his departed soul . . . and the undertaker believes her.)

Bradley is under contract to write 4 more Flavia deLuce novels, all of them, he says, dealing with some bygone aspect of British life. This second one shows that the first one was definitely not a fluke, and I'm only sad that we'll have to wait til next year for the third.

One final thing I should add; as with the first, I listened to this as an audio book, and it really works beautifully. Jayne Entwhistle is an excellent narrator, and the few small things that irritated me about her reading in the first book are mostly gone. (In that one, I thought, occasionally, that she made Flavia sound a bit smarmy sometimes, when Flavia was, admittedly, gloating over something or other. That's much reduced in this one.) Entwhistle flings herself into the role of Flavia with abandon, and it's a testament to both her narration and Bradley's skill as an author that Flavia comes to such mischievous, sparkling life. I think now that my best books of 2010 will have to expand to give Alan Bradley his very own category.

On Audio Books: Part I (Mysteries)

After my post on Corduroy Mansions a few weeks ago, Robin Aronson, over at Local or Express?, said she was interested in hearing more about audio books. (She envisions herself listening while knitting, which seems like a fine plan to me. I do sometimes listen while knitting, though I'm more likely to listen while in the car, at the gym or in the kitchen chopping vegetables.) There are many things I don't know much about or don't spend a lot of time thinking about--(to wit, Alex's question the other day while reading the Sunday NY Times: "If you were Obama, what would you do first?" Me, looking blankly at him, "I have no idea. That's why I don't want to be president.")--but, over the years, I've spent a lot of time thinking about--or at least listening to--audio books. (I realize that may make me sound rather shallow. Oh well.)

I re-discovered the pleasure of being read to in college, when I worked in the White Mountains for the Appalachian Mountain Club. One winter, I hiked up to visit a friend who was the winter caretaker at Carter Notch Hut, and I discovered that he was a regular listener of "The Radio Reader," a program out of Michigan State University. (Amazingly, the Web site says that it's been around in some form or another since 1936. That's longevity.) For the few days I was there, I listened with him to a bio of Katharine Hepburn. And the next year, when I was a hut caretaker myself, I made sure to find the station that carried "The Radio Reader" so I could listen again.

Some years later, in 1994, I was living in New Delhi. That was the year that the Internet really became a part of people's lives in the US, but it wasn't yet part of life in India. During the summer, monsoon season, most of my friends were away, and I spent a lot of time in my very hot apartment. (Why I was too stubborn to get an air conditioner--or even a swamp cooler--I can no longer recall.) I had a little shortwave radio, and I listened to it a lot that summer. You can imagine my excitement when I discovered "Off the Shelf," from the BBC World Service, a program like "The Radio Reader," where someone read a book in 15 or 30 minute installments. I have such a vivid image of myself lying on the floor of my bedroom, directly beneath the fan, wearing the (hussy) shorts and tank top I couldn't wear outside my apartment, listening to Rebecca over the course of many muggy evenings. (That it was an abridged version was the only thing I didn't like. When I started listening to books on tape a few years later, I listened to the unabridged version because it didn't feel like the shorter one counted.)

There's my segue to my list. I only listen to unabridged books, even for things that are really, really long, even if the author approved the cuts. So far, 12 years and counting, there have been no exceptions.

Another thing to pay attention to is the reader. These fall into categories. There are readers who make their livings reading audio books. There are actors (many, but not all, British) who also read audio books. And every once in awhile, a writer reads his or her own book. Generally, the professional readers and the actors do a better job, just because it's more of a performance (which turns out to kind of matter), but one true exception is Charles Frazier reading Cold Mountain. He's not a fancy reader, but listening to it really reminded me of how fundamental it is to have people tell us stories. (It's also a book I'm not sure I would have enjoyed reading, but I liked listening to it a lot.)

I've probably listened to hundreds of audio books over the past 12 years, so it would be hard to name them all. I do have some recommendations, though, and I can sort them, generally, by category. I'm going to start with mysteries, just because I listen to a lot of them. I like reading mysteries anyway, but one thing I learned early on is that I really need something with a plot, or at least a strong narrative. (While I might like to read ethereal, beautifully written meditations on love and loss, I do not like to listen to them. Give me a plot line any day.) I also like mysteries because usually they are written in series form, and that means that if you find a series you like, there will be lots of books to listen to.

So, if you're an audio book novice and like mysteries, here are a few to start with:

• Donna Leon's Guido Brunetti mysteries--set in Venice and featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti, these are thoughtful, literate, well-written books. Brunetti is a wonderful character, as is his English professor/Henry James loving wife Paola. They will also make you hungry, as Brunetti is a serious eater who tries to make it home for lunch every day to eat whatever delights Paola has produced. I'm a fan, usually, of starting at the beginning, so even though the series gets better as it goes along, start with the first one, Death at La Fenice. The earlier books are read by Anna Fields (the stage name of Kate Fleming, who, very sadly, drowned in a freak storm a few years ago), and the later ones by David Colacci.

• Martha Grimes' Richard Jury series. I didn't follow my own rule with these and ended up listening to one of the later ones first. It's a long series, more than 20 books now, and the earliest ones aren't available on CD (or even tape, in some cases.) Still, listening to book number 17 made me want to go back and find the rest. It's possible to read these not in order (as I discovered), though it makes more sense if you do. Although Grimes is American, Jury is a Scotland Yard inspector, and he is often assisted in his investigations by his aristocratic friend Melrose Plant (officially an Earl til he gave up his title, though he still lives in serious comfort). The books are all named after pubs that play a role in each case. As in any long series, they're not all equally good, but Jury is always compelling, and Grimes is especially good at writing wise-beyond-their-years children (which is probably why they turn up in so many of her books). The earlier books are narrated by Davina Porter and the later ones by John Lee. (Both good readers, with a slight edge to Lee, I think.)

• I also recently listened to Martha Grimes' standalone mystery Foul Matter, set in the world of NY publishing, and it is very, very funny. Laugh out loud funny, especially if you know anything at all about how publishing works. Highly recommended.
  

• Margaret Maron's Deborah Knott series. Set in fictional Colleton County, North Carolina and with a feisty judge as the main character. Very occasionally a bit sappy, but the main characters are solid, and the series is topical. CJ Critt narrates the whole series (now up to book 14). Start with the first, Bootlegger's Daughter.

• Years ago, when I first discovered Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody series, I was delighted. The author (whose real name is Barbara Mertz) has a degree in Egyptology, so it made sense that her main characters--the know-it-all Amelia Peabody and her dashing archeologist husband Emerson--were Egyptologists as well. The first few books in the series were quite charming, but as the series moved along, and the extended Emerson family grew larger, the series got more and more convoluted, and I had a hard time keeping track of what was going on.

• Audio books to the rescue. On a whim, I decided to listen to one of the later books, and all of a sudden it made sense. The narrator of all of the books is Barbara Rosenblat, who's a star in the world of audio books. Listen to the early books (the first is Crocodile on the Sandbank, in which the outspoken spinster Amelia annoys Radcliffe Emerson so much that he has no choice but to marry her) because they're fun, and if you listen to them in order, you may even be able to keep track of all of the Peabody-Emerson's many friends and relations.

• Barbara Rosenblat also narrates Peters' much shorter Vicky Bliss series. (Vicky is an art historian with a notorious art thief for a lover--only in fiction.) After a 14 year hiatus, Peters has just come out with the 6th Vicky Bliss novel called Laughter of the Dead Kings. (I'm waiting for it from the library, so I can't report how the series has weathered after such a long gap.) I listened to the first five in my early days of audio book listening, and I enjoyed all of them, but the fifth in the series, Night Train to Memphis, is particularly a hoot. (Don't expect a lot of realism, but they're fun to listen to.)

I'm going to end this installment here and write about other kinds of audio books another time.

Meanwhile, after listening to the first 60 installments of Corduroy Mansions all in a row, I'm now all caught up and have to listen to one episode at a time, like everyone else. A very different listening experience, but still interesting. But now I have all kinds of unanswered questions. What will Berthea say when she learns that Terence has bought a Porsche? What is Barbara going to do to get her revenge on the odious Oedipus Snark? Why did Freddie de la Hay (former sniffer dog at Heathrow Airport) get so excited about the painting in Eddie's wardrobe? We will all just have to wait to find out.