Barbara's Debut Review

Barbara and her Man [on] Friday

Jeff--Saturday

I have an announcement to make. It’s approaching Barbara’s and my six-month anniversary, but that’s not the announcement.  Lesa Holstine—book reviewer, librarian, and great person extraordinaire--asked that I write a blogpost for Scottsdale, Arizona’s Poisoned Pen Bookstore, a place we mystery authors all know well. The premise was to write about “Distractions.”  What books kept us distracted during these pandemic times.  Lesa wanted two or three examples from me.  But I had another idea.

First of all, how was I going to decide among the many first-rate new releases from my Murder is Everywhere blogmates?  Secondly, in many cases I’d have to lie about reading them, as I’d found my distraction in immersing myself in my own writing. So, I hit upon this idea: have Barbara—who’s been reading voraciously--take the heat and make the choices.  Not to be outfoxed by moi, she agreed to recommend two, but only if I did the same. 

Arrgh. Foiled again, I accepted.

That left me to decide among my blogmates. How to do that?  I took the easiest way out and did it alphabetically.  I went with those with a last name starting with “S,” but not living at the moment in a country that started with the first letter of my first name.   

That seemed a fair way to do things. And despite recent anonymous pound and rand deposits to my bank account, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Anyway, below is the post and here is how it looks on line...with an introduction courtesy of Lesa [feel free to skip over the part about me].

Lesa Holstine

Jeffrey Siger’s photo is at the top of his piece [Nope, I replaced it with a far more lovely one], and we’ll talk about his Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis pieces, but it’s a treat to have him joined by his wife, Barbara. I’ve known Jeff for a number of years, and it’s so nice to have them share writing duties here.

Jeffrey Siger was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, practiced law at a major Wall Street law firm, and later established his own New York City law firm where he continued as one of its name partners until giving it all up to write full-time among the people, life, and politics of his beloved Mykonos. The Mykonos Mob is the tenth novel in his internationally best-selling and award nominated Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis series, following up on An Aegean April, Santorini Caesars, Devil in Delphi, Sons of Sparta, Mykonos After Midnight, Target: Tinos, Prey on Patmos, Assassins of Athens, and Murder in Mykonos.

The New York Times described Jeffrey Siger’s novels as “thoughtful police procedurals set in picturesque but not untroubled Greek locales,” and named him as Greece’s thriller writer of record. The Greek Press called his work “prophetic,” Eurocrime described him as a “very gifted American author…on a par with other American authors such as Joseph Wambaugh or Ed McBain,” and the City of San Francisco awarded him its Certificate of Honor citing that his “acclaimed books have not only explored modern Greek society and its ancient roots but have inspired political change in Greece.” He now lives in Greece and the U.S. You can find Siger’s books in the Web Store, http://bit.ly/2jC3gpp

You can also find the books that both Barbara and Jeffrey suggest as “Distractions”. Check in the Web Store for those as well. https://store.poisonedpen.com/

*****

Ahh, distractions. How I love them.  Truth be told, prior to Barbara and I squirreling ourselves away on our farm on the edge of the pandemic’s worldwide epicenter, I was reading at the pace of one or two new mystery/thrillers a week. But then came the plague, and I fell into a very different, but comfortable routine.

I’ve been banging away on the keyboard every day, immersed in a standalone I’d been meaning to write for a half-dozen years, chasing new characters in whatever directions they decided to go. In other words, I’ve been living in a different world, returning to this one only long enough to repair a leaky roof, remove the occasional unwelcome snake from the front porch, or perform otherwise necessary farm chores—like eating and sleeping.

Yes, I know reading provides the same form of escape for many—thank God—but this time writing did the job for me.  I’m happy to say I just finished the first draft of my standalone obsession and look forward to returning to my normal reading routine. In a moment, I’ll tell you the books at the very top of my TBR list.

But first, I think it may be of more interest to you to hear a few insights from my wife on the books she’s been reading over these past months while I’ve been goofing off at the keyboard. So, here they are, in her words:

Friends and family have told me that reading during the Covid crisis has become too difficult for them. They simply cannot stay focused.  But I’m reading the same as always. Perhaps it’s my choice of books, for I’ve been happily accompanying strong female characters through the slower-paced, elegant, and structured settings of Jane Austen novels. I love their modern, often humorous take on human nature, filled with subtle jabs at the pretensions of the wealthy, and silly small-minded behaviors of family members and so-called friends, all still so very relevant today. My return-to-Austen-novels-binge began with her unfinished, eleven-chapter Sanditon, and has taken me (thus far) back through Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion.

Coincidentally, just before the crisis, I’d binged on Charles Todd’s Bess Crawford series (starting with #1, A Duty to the Dead), featuring a devoted, tireless nurse struggling through the illnesses and death of World War I and the 1918 influenza pandemic. These days I often think about Bess, and how her human instincts, pathos, and heroism are reflected in today’s hero nurses.

What attracts me to Austen’s and Charles Todd’s work is that each is written from the perspective of sharp, intelligent, strong-minded women; women who could be my friends.

Thanks, Barbara. Now on to my picks of two works I cannot wait to read.  I’m sure my choices won’t surprise you, as they’re the newest releases of great authors.

We all know and love Zoë Sharp for her iconic Charlie Fox series, but I cannot wait to read her just released Bones in the River.  It’s the second gripping police procedural in her CSI Grace McColl and Detective Nick Weston thriller series based in England’s Cumbria Lakes region. “Dark, shocking, and exciting, but imbued with intuitive empathy and dry wit throughout” is how one reader described it. 

The novel opens with the death of a local child, and though an accident, the killer makes a panicked decision to hide the evidence. The child’s body is found as a small Lakes town is in the midst of hosting its Appleby Horse Fair, a traditional event drawing the largest gathering of Gypsies and Travellers in Europe.  The discovery quickly turns longstanding prejudices and distrust of Roma into accusations and much more. As one relentless dramatic discovery after another unfolds, Sharp draws us into better understanding what drives the Gypsy stigma, through her vivid characters, engrossing and balanced exploration of complex family issues, and gifted prose.

What more could one ask for in seeking distraction?

For fans of Michael Stanley’s award-winning Detective Kubu series, a treat is in store for us with their latest book, Facets of Death. Actually, it could be labeled first in the series, because it’s the prequel to all that we’ve come to love about these Botswana-based novels featuring David Bengu, whose girth has him nicknamed Kubu (Setswana for “hippopotamus”).  It’s the story of how Kubu applied his keen mind and famous persistence (along with his namesake’s gift for masking one of the deadliest creatures in Africa behind a docile appearance) to overcome the jealousies of his colleagues when he entered the Botswana CID straight from university as a detective, skipping the usual beat cop phase. 

When the richest diamond mine in the world is robbed of 100,000 carats in a deadly hijacking, police suspect an inside job, but have no evidence of who it might be. After the robbers are killed execution-style and the diamonds are still missing, suspicion switches to a witch doctor and his son, and the case lands in Kubu’s prodigious lap for him to show the skill and integrity needed to catch those responsible—or find his career at an end.  I’m pretty sure I know how this will end for Kubu, but the great thing about reading Michael Stanley novels is how much you learn about Africa and so many other things along the way…and the masterful story telling that takes you there.

Well, that’s all for now folks.  Here’s wishing for you all to stay safe—and happily distracted.

*****

Jeffrey Siger’s most recent book in the Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis series is Island of Secrets, previously published as The Mykonos Mob.

--Jeff [and Barbara]

Thou Shalt Not Take the Name of Jane in Vain

Annamaria on Monday

One would not think that one of the greatest novelist of all time - in any language - would need the likes of me to defend her.  But for decades now, I have been appalled at the way popular opinion has played fast and loose with Jane's identity as an author.  I feel that, in my small way, I have to stand up for who she really was.

A recent assault on her reputation has forced me to speak up: the stroke that nearly caused me apoplexy was the recent British TV edition of Austen's unfinished novel Sanditon.  But before I get to that, allow me to call attention to the drivel about Jane that has had me fuming for a few decades.

I'll start with the biggest  lie of all.

JANE AUSTEN DID NOT WRITE ROMANCE NOVELS

Austen wrote brilliant satiric novels of manners.  She would not have said this about herself because when her genius was opening new, splendid vistas for book-length storytelling, the art form was still too young for its practitioners to be forced into categories.

Austen wrote one of the most famous opening lines in the history of literature:  "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." 

With that salvo, Austen sets in motion a story about the absurd and painful events that can flow from such a belief.  Her characters, male and female, suffer under its weight and expectations.  Worst of all the daughters of Mrs. Bennet, the silly woman that her creator pillories throughout the story.   Mrs. Bennet is the first to speak and just about everything she says and does exemplifies the dangers of such a widespread and false assumption. 

I am peppering this post generously with quotes from Jane.  The one above is another case in point.  Such a jejune statement is being held up for ridicule.  Any character who would make such a remark is obviously going to be a prime example of the pitfalls of naive husband hunting.

Austen's acid wit does not merely chronicle the mores and customs of her age, she is satirizes them.  Read her Northanger Abbey and see how she satirizes the gothic novels so popular during her lifetime.

If you don't have armchair time to add another book to your to-be-read pile, listen to the audio version read by the splendid Glenda Jackson. 

By questioning the sobriquet "romance novelist" when it comes to Jane, I do not mean to belittle the work of such authors.  Or any other genre writers.  All the subcategories that we use today include writers of wonderful fiction.  Some of the best literature of our age is written by genre writers,  But to label Jane Austen as a romance writer would be like saying that William Shakespeare was an actor who also wrote some plays.  What Jane wrote is so very much more than books that can be so categorized.

Oh, the romances are there, and often offer the satisfaction of plausible happy endings.  But in every story, before the wedding, the characters must recognize and free themselves from their own pride, their own prejudice.  Before their creator bestows "happily ever after" upon them, they must learn to temper their own sensibility with a hefty dose of good sense. 

Almost nothing about this recent TV series truly reflects Jane Austen

What British TV did was to take the first twelve chapters of a novel Austen never got to finish and turn them into a one of their typical series.  Beautiful costumes and expensive sets, gorgeous actors, some of whom are really goosdat their jobs, but also hefty amounts voyeurism.  In this case there was graphic sex, but less nudity than one would usually find in such offerings.  The Regency period shows up in the costumes and the facades of buildings.  The interior decoration borders on surreal.  The dialogue is anachronistic in the extreme, and there is nothing Jane-like about the plot.  NOTHING! 

Austen's plot lines and characterizations are so tightly crafted that in every book there comes a moment when a character's emotions are in such conflict that the reader viscerally responds to how impossible it is for her to carry on.  I call these "Jane Austen moments."  Readers of Austen will recognize them:  When Colonel Brandon asks Elinor to offer the living of Delaford to Edward Ferrars so that he can marry Lucy Steele.  And when Anne Elliot receives the news that Louisa Musgrove will recuperate from her injury and will now be well enough to marry Frederick Wentworth.

Nothing remotely this interesting happens in the TV "completion" of Jane Austen's story.  Instead we get incest, boxing, fist fights, unsubtle references to a "hand job" and a fussy weathy matron talking openly about her ward and her nephew having had intercourse on the huge image of a snake in the center of her drawing room's marble floor.  She needn't have bothered to tell us about it.  We saw it for ourselves.

Did you notice in the picture above that the title says, "Jane Austen's Sanditon?"  Why do you suppose they said that, when they knew that not one person connected with the show thought in the least about trying to imagine where Austen was going with that story.  Not that anyone but Jane herself could come near to what her genius imagination would have invented.  What I resent is that they didn't even try.  They took Jane's name in vain because they knew it would sell.  I hope they choke on their takings.

In this case, pictures of schlock make ME sick and wicked.

Contemplating Mothers Real and Fictional

Annamaria on Monday

My head is so completely occupied with my work in progress that I can hardly tear myself away from the manuscript to fix myself a meal and keep my regular appointments.  The book is at that point where the arc of the story is in place, and I am cleaning up the language and adding a bit of vibrancy (I hope) to the imagery.  I love this part of my job so much that, right now, I don't want to be doing anything else.  But it is Sunday afternoon, which is blog production time here Chez Patrice.  It is also Mother's Day in the USA.  Hence:

Let's talk about mothers in fiction, it's safer that way.  A psychological truism, after all, is that mother-daughter relationships are the most fraught and complicated on the planet.

Disclaimer:  I am going to talk about my fictional mothers and Jane Austen's fictional mothers.  In no way do I mean, by this, to put myself in a class with Jane.  It's just that hers and mine are the fictional mothers I know best.

Let's start with hers.  They are, by and large, an unattractive bunch.  I mean as mothers.  They are all quite beautiful, but even the best of them leaves something to be desired.

Mrs. Bennet

Lizzie's mama is, to my way of thinking, the worst of the lot.  She is silly, crass, and negligent  of anything about her five daughters, except for their marriageability.  She has done nothing to inform her daughters' minds, to help them develop their talents.  Even by early Nineteenth Century standards, she leaves their education to chance and cares only about their clothes and good looks, and what kind of marriage bait they will grow up to be.  In Pride and Prejudice, even Lady Catherine de Bourgh comes across as a better mother than Mrs. Bennet.  Her two oldest girls turn out very well despite her bad example.   One wonders how they managed to blossom as they did under the tutelage of such a weak-minded woman.

Lady Bertram and Mrs. Price

The two mothers in Mansfield Park don't add up to one good one.  Lady Bertram hardly every stands up straight.  She is completely incapable of doing anything more complicated than petting her dog.  Her sister, Fanny Price's mother back in Portsmouth, has made a very bad choice of husband and spends the rest of her life suffering in poverty and slovenliness.  The best she can do for her daughters, two of them anyway, is to send them off to be raised by her sisters in Mansfield Park--the aforementioned shadow of a woman Lady Bertram and the otherwise childless and insufferable Aunt Norris.  Fanny, too, somehow grows up to be a reasonably stable adult woman despite the lack of a decent role model.

Mrs. Dashwood

The mama of the Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret is the best of the mothers Jane created.  Less than ideal, she is at least something approaching a functioning adult.  She sits, like her second daughter Marianne, squarely on the Sensibility part of the spectrum.   Her lack of practicality forces her eldest daughter, Elinor to grow up what today's psychologists would call a parentified child.  Were it not for Elinor 's good Sense (with a capital S) the family would not have survived much past the girls' father's death in the first chapter of the book.

Austen's other heroines--Emma Woodhouse, Ann Elliot, and Catherine Morland--don't have mothers at all.   Emma's and Ann's have died before the story begins.  I think Catherine's has too, but I have to admit that I have not read Northanger Abbey in enough years that I can't remember why the mother of the heroine in that story is absent.

All of this makes me wonder what Austen's own mother must have been like.    Perhaps it is unfair to judge her by her daughter's fictional mamas, but certain as I am that a novelist's characters come out of her unconscious, I am suspicious.

There are two mother-daughter pairs in my City of Silver, one in Invisible Country, and one in Strange Gods.  None of my fictional mothers is perfect, but even the most flawed of them--Inez's mother in City of Silver--has an understandable condition.  When I think about my fictional moms, I see, to some extent, my own mother and my grandmother in them--their strengths and their flaws.  Quite a number of my female characters have mothers who have died--perhaps because my own mom died, far too young, when I was only 36.

Most of my readers know that Annamaria Alfieri is my pen name and that I chose it because it is my mother's first name and her mother's maiden name.  My female forebears never had my opportunities.  They had their flaws, but I took their names to honor them and because I forgave them their shortcomings.

Here they are.  They made me what I am today.

Maria Sabina Alfieri

Annamaria Pisacane