R.V. RAMAN'S PAGE: Harith Athreya series 1 & 2...GRAVE INTENTIONS, and A WILL TO KILL

A WILL TO KILL (Harith Athreya #1)
R.V. RAMAN
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$2.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: MIST, MOUNTAINS, MURDER.

Ageing millionaire Bhaskar Fernandez has invited his relatives to the remote, and possibly haunted, Greybrooke Manor, high up in the misty Nilgiris.

He knows his guests expect to gain from his death, so he writes two conflicting wills. Which one of them comes into force will depend on how he dies.

Fernandez also invites Harith Athreya, a seasoned investigator, to watch what unfolds.

When a landslide leaves the estate temporarily isolated, and a body is discovered, Athreya finds that death is not the only thing that the mist conceals. . .

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: First in a new series of private-investigator mysteries set in India. This Golden-Age style story about a murder yet to occur and fully expected by its purported victim that then morphs into a locked-room mystery is investigated by a Poirot-level famous private investigator. Or so we're told...I'm as always just a bit annoyed that I'm vouchsafed no evidence of this assertion, but that complaint is not one bit new or unusual.

I was set to love the read from the get-go because I read these reissues this summer. It's set in cool, misty mountains, and I about sobbed with jealousy as I compared that to the supersummer outside. *sigh* As I encountered more and more characters, beginning to wonder about a dramatis personae being notably absent. Such a simple thing to add, I mused, and so very helpful. It also struck me that the characters were more or less in the highwayman school: stand and deliver their piece of the narrative. That's a lot of time spent outside the narrative stagecoach waiting to get moving again.

A body is discovered. It means we're all in the stagecoach again, moving at a slightly bouncy, uncushioned pace. It becomes a locked-room mystery as we're moving along; no change of bouncing rocking pace as we clunk shins and bonk shoulders with characters who *are* going to say their piece, despite earlier attitudinal tics. It could have something to do with the sausage-fest we're having here, everyone is male and don't they just show it. A second body is discovered and there is more stand-and-deliver set-piece delivery. A big problem for me is no one who's died is at all, in any way, undeserving of their murder.

It's like a lesser Poirot story meant to convey the eerieness of The Pale Horseman. It works as a story well enough because we know where we're going. It's a bit less effective if the reader's not already on board with the Golden-Age conventions because then the solution, and its delivery by Athreya, ties everything to objects we're aware exist but not filled in on particulars about. It makes the solution a bit less impactful, more like the delivery of a sermon that we and everyone else, simply accept is true and so must be correct.

Points for period appropriateness, then, fewer for fair-play mystery solution, and please dear goddesses give me a damn list of who's who at the beginning. As a series starter I'm most definitely glad I've got all four in their reissue; I don't think I'd've picked up the second one (see below) if it had come out a year or more later.

The ebook is on sale, so definitely go get one!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


GRAVE INTENTIONS (Harith Athreya #2)
R.V. RAMAN
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Death, a cursed archaeological dig, and a beloved detective feature in this cozy stand-alone mystery set in contemporary India.

SECRETS

Seasoned detective Harith Athreya is back, this time to investigate suspicious incidences on a riverside dig in the heart of remote Bundelkhand.

SUPERSTITION

In this place, rich in myth and history, the legend goes that anyone who sets foot on nearby island Naaz Tapu would be cursed forever.

SLAUGHTER

When an archaeologist defies local folklore, the fallout is swift and deadly. Is the death a result of the ancient curse, or is it a more down-to-earth case of murder? Athreya needs to unravel the truth from legend before the curse strikes again….

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Archaeology! Possible supernatural stuff! A Dramatis Personae! Yes, yes, yes to all of these as good omens, and ways to get my repeat business.

On to the story.

Book two sets itself the task of telling us binaries exist for a reason, there is nothing we do not want to be expressed in a well-matched faceoff between, eg, two young women who are chilly career driven professional/warm, inclusive, family-loving opposites. Athreya is on a holiday with the latter, a nibling of his, and the former is the director of a "cursed" archaeological dig where a local wise guy seems to be stealing artifacts the dig is uncovering. A local legend of lovers kept apart by centuries old political feuding placing the area under a curse offers a modern murderer cover is the first thought a mystery fan would have; but who wants the specific person dead and why? What is the dig site looking for? Do local customs only matter if the people flouting them are white/colonizer people?

Again requested to solve a crime yet to take place, Athreya immediately zooms in on the artifact thefts but...well...are they thefts or rescues of cultural patrimony? Who decides this? What difference does it make, if the end result is the object ends up far far away leaving nothing in its place? Knowledge of the past that will never be accessible to the cultural descendants is no more complete a theft than a profitably sold antiquity....

In the quest to solve the mysteries via fair play, Author Raman snuck a valuable clue past me...in plain sight! Well done, sir. I enjoyed the Murder in Mesopotamia meets The White Tiger vibes. It felt more cohesive and less speechifyin' in tone than A Will to Kill (above) did. The read passed with admirable velocity, the Dramatis Personae made a big difference to my sense of the read as under my control, and Athreya's enough more familiar to me this time around that I felt prepared from the off to invest in his resolution.

A career spent making corporate presentations and mentoring young entrepreneurs has taught Author Raman to stay nimble, to choose a principle at the center of the story he wants to tell then to be sure his story relates to that principle all the way through. That serves him well in this second Athreya mystery/thriller.

MUTINY ON THE RISING SUN: A Tragic Tale of Slavery, Smuggling, and Chocolate, what happens when greed is unbound

MUTINY ON THE RISING SUN: A Tragic Tale of Slavery, Smuggling, and Chocolate
JARED ROSS HARDESTY
NYU Press
$28.00 hardcover, available now; $20.00 trade paper, available in April

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: On the night of June 1, 1743, terror struck the schooner Rising Sun. After completing a routine smuggling voyage where the crew sold enslaved Africans in exchange for chocolate, sugar, and coffee in the Dutch colony of Suriname, the ship traveled eastward along the South American coast.

Believing there was an opportunity to steal the lucrative cargo and make a new life for themselves, three sailors snuck below deck, murdered four people, and seized control of the vessel. Mutiny on the Rising Sun recounts the origins, events, and eventual fate of the Rising Sun's final smuggling voyage in vivid detail.

Starting from that night in June 1743, it narrates a history of smuggling, providing an incredible story of those caught in the webs spun by illicit commerce. The case generated a rich documentary record that illuminates an international chocolate smuggling ring, the lives of the crew and mutineers, and the harrowing experience of the enslaved people trafficked by the Rising Sun.

Smuggling stood at the center of the lives of everyone involved with the business of the schooner. Larger forces, such as imperial trade restrictions, created the conditions for smuggling, but individual actors, often driven by raw ambition and with little regard for the consequences of their actions, designed, refined, and perpetuated this illicit commerce.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The first third of the book is explaining the mutineers, their lives, and their society to us; it is not the swiftest or most action-packed start. This was not a negative for this reader, as I was more than a little appalled and repulsed by the details of the lives chosen by dramatis personae in their access of greed.

The mutiny itself is an event that was documented well enough to give the author a lot of detail that he is not reluctant to share with us. As I am interested in the world these men inhabited, and as their actions and motives are so illuminating of the attitudes and the expectations of the time, I was again kept involved. Adequate citations matter to me in history reads and I was almost pleased with them here...could have had more in-line citations at times, but I was not left with the feeling he was making it up.

The last half was more the opinionating, and that was enough in line with my own strongly held opinions that I felt no dragging of my interest in the story of slaving, smuggling, and the awful human cost of people's love for chocolate (which I don't share). The mutineers were men of their time, they had no moral qualm with what was haening on the ship; they wanted more than they were getting of the proceeds from the captain's flouting of the laws of the Empire whose own greed was in conflict with all the men's personal greeds.

Edified, I was not. The so-called justice meted out on the mutineers appalled and disgusted me. It was, to my mind, a bit overplayed...but it was what factually happened to more men than these, and many better than these greedy fucks, whose moral compasses only saw the money that the moral outrage of slavery could bring.

This is a well-written and thoroughly researched (as far as records can go in this time, which is limited in both its completeness and survival). It is not action-packed, so look elsewhere for derring-do. It is a readable cauionary tale about the consequences to real human beings when their greed is untrammelled.

THE INISHOWEN MYSTERIES, fifth of the five to date starring Ben O'Keeffe: THE BODY FALLS

THE BODY FALLS
ANDREA CARTER (Inishowen Mysteries #5)
Oceanview Publishing
$27.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Bridges Down—Roads Impassable—Killer Trapped

April in Florida and Benedicta (Ben) O’Keeffe is enjoying balmy temperatures during the last few days of a six month stint with a U.S. law firm. A week later, she returns to Glendara, Inishowen, where a charity cycle event is taking place. The town is abuzz with excitement, but it starts to rain, causing the cyclists to postpone the start of their event and stay overnight in the town. The rain doesn’t stop—it becomes relentless, torrential.

In the middle of the night, Police Sergeant Tom Molloy is called out to Mamore Gap, where a body, dislodged from a high bank by the heavy rain, has fallen onto a passing vehicle. It is identified as Bob Jameson, a well-known charities boss and the organizer of the cycling event. Stunned, the local doctor finds evidence of a recent snakebite. Terrible weather persists and soon bridges are down and roads are impassable. Glendara is completely cut off and since there are no native snakes in Ireland, could there be a killer trapped in the community? With no help from the outside world, it’s left to Molloy—with Ben’s assistance—to find out who is responsible for Bob Jameson’s bizarre death.

The novels in the Inishowen Mystery Series stand on their own and can be read in any order.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I don't entirely agree with the publisher that these books can be read in any order. I myownself suggest that you begin at #1 Death at Whitewater Church, and progress in an orderly fashion to this one, #5. But that is, of course, merely a recommendation.

I think, though, that without having seen Tom Molloy the Garda sergeant and Ben develop their feelings for and about each other, I'd've missed a major pleasure of the series mystery. Going back to earlier books, knowing what's happened in this book, would negatively impact my pleasure in the read. After Ben's return from Florida, which is totally unexplored in this book but where groundwork has been laid for future troubles to come Ben's way, she gets right back to trouble in her parents' home: The Usurper, as she mentally refers to him, has moved in and taken over the day-to-day running of their lives. They met in a group for grieving parents that all belong to. Ben, jet-lagged and knowing she's out of line to speak about the living arrangement of compos mentis adults, still feels...weird...about the situation.

However, Inishowen and six months' absence-worth of work to catch up on the disposition of ring a loud bell. To her own mild surprise, Ben is really looking forward to her homecoming...it's really home, she knows after leaving it. The locum, Marina, and her legal assistant are no doubt going to need to spill a lot of tea. Yay! Except for the filthy weather forecasted for the whole of Ireland that she must pilot her Mini (befouled by having been lent without her knowlege or consent to The Usurper) through, this is a great day.

Oh Ben. Sweet summer child.

Based on the factual Irish flooding and resultant disasters of 2017, there's really no let-up of either rain or trouble for Ben, Inishowen, Tom Molloy, ans a certain murdered party. (Whom I loathed from his first appearance. Though I found Author Carter's description of him perilously close to body-shaming.)

What mostly happens in this entry into the series is rain. Ungodly, Biblical-flood rain. Stuff falling over, people needing rescuing rain, and all of that's real. The author even points us, in her Acknowledgments, to national Irish papers doing the story in 2017. Everything that happens to the deadie happens because gawd let loose a strong stream of atmospheric water on Inishowen. How's that for a ready-made plot?!

What we get, in book five, is a reckoning of sorts between Ben and Garda Tom Molloy for their very tentative relationship's new course. I loved the way it led Tom, in extremis with the flooding, to resign himself to Ben's usual snooping...even saying at one point he needed the help given the tragic weather-disaster consequences.

As this book deals with someone being murdered whose murderer(s) I found delightful for their willingness to do it at all...cleaning the gene pool, I call it...that I was almost ready for an Orient Express solution. I didn't get one. Darn it. But instead there were more deths to Inishowen's people revealed. I am always glad that the author does this for us, makes the characters matter to us and still tells the tough stories that require resolution.

I'd say this entry was the best in the series. I feel more clear about Tom and Ben and their whatever. And the ending makes me think there's a lot of mileage in the couplehood they have set course for. In many ways they remind me of Mr. and Mrs. North, the Lockridges' sleuthing pair, in their earlier adventures. I hope that vibe continues.

TWO SPIES IN CARACAS, Moisés Naím's novel of the world-changing coup d'etat in Venezuela, translated by Daniel Hahn

TWO SPIES IN CARACAS
MOISÉS NAÍM (tr. Daniel Hahn)
AmazonCrossing (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: From the New York Times bestselling author of The End of Power comes an edge-of-your-seat political thriller about rival spies, dangerous love, and one of history’s most devastating revolutions.

Venezuela, 1992. Unknown colonel Hugo Chávez stages an ill-fated coup against a corrupt government, igniting the passions of Venezuela’s poor and catapulting the oil-rich country to international attention. For two rival spies hurriedly dispatched to Caracas—one from Washington, DC, and the other from Fidel Castro’s Cuba—this is a career-defining mission.

Smooth-talking Iván Rincón of Cuba’s Intelligence Directorate needs a rebel ally to secure the future of his own country. His job: support Chávez and the revolution by rallying the militants and neutralizing any opposing agents.

Meanwhile, the CIA’s Cristina Garza will do everything in her power to cut Chávez’s influence short. Her priority: stabilize the greatest oil reserves on the planet by ferreting out and eliminating Cuba’s principal operative.

As Chávez surges to power, Iván’s and Cristina’s paths cross. Soon they’re caught in the fallout of a toxic political time bomb: an intrepid female reporter and unwitting informant, a drug lord and key architect in Chávez’s rise, and Iván and Cristina themselves. With everything at stake, the adversaries find themselves at the center of a game of espionage, seduction, murder, and shifting alliances playing out against the precarious backdrop of a nation in free fall. A thrilling fictional story based on unimaginable real-life events.

I RECEIVED THIS DRC FROM AMAZON PRIME'S FIRST READS PROGRAM. THANK YOU.

My Review: Spying? Romancing? Weeelll...not quite as much as I'd been expecting based on the title. What there was of espionage was centered on the mechanics and motivations for spying on one's neighbors. The Americans have this corporately-coveted giant lake of petrochemicals close to them...the Cubans need the fuel...and the Venezuelans need food, medicine, the basics.

No one gets what they expected to get because Hugo Chávez (quite obviously the author's bête noire) steps in the big, fat middle of things out of nowhere and shits all over the players. He's nobody in the hierarchy's opinion. He comes from nowhere. He's got no family pull. He's got a crap education. The author posits that he's a mentally ill striver. As he's dead, and was considered an enemy by the US Government's right-wing intelligence community, I'm inclined to put that down to politically motivated retrospective diagnosis.

Whatever! I didn't mean to get so bogged down in the material I think surrounds the story. The on-the-page story is heavy on Hugo, light on spies, and still manages to be about the reasons spying happens in a way that was very interesting to read. The role of Pablo Escobar and his money in Chávez's rise, the massive betrayals that are inherent in any leader coming to power and seeing the perspective from inside instead of outside, and the hilarious (if terrifying) reality that "we" know about 5% of what is actually going on when "we" are making our decisions, all made the read worth my time to pursue. I'm afraid the prose wasn't lulling me into turning the pages:

"I'm warning you, the president's ambitions are no longer local or regional. He wants international influence. He already has the oil production in his hands. and he'll spend whatever is necessary to make the world pay attention. This black gold will finance his socialist expansion. Hugo's narcissism is global now!"

A spy reporting to her Washington-based boss wouldn't be terribly likely to use an exclam. Or to be so bluntly undiplomatic. She wouldn't be employed for long.

"The moment is approaching for you to serve the revolution. When {the thing happens}, it's essential for Cuba that you, comrade Nicolás Maduro, {do the thing}."

The future {doer of the thing}, as anointed by Fidel, smiled yet said nothing; both men knew he had nothing to say. And there was no need.

So, does the author think Cuba runs the show or does he think Cuba runs the show. I mean, there was no time at which socialism and Cuba and Fidel and Hugo weren't all presented in the dimmest, dankest dungeon-light.

The world spins on, though, and the focus of the story leaves the international stage to light on the two spies in Caracas. They've met, fallen in love, and begun to weave a tissue of lies that looks like a life together if you squint at it just right. Iván, the Cuban scion of a powerful political family, and Cristina, an illegal Mexican immigrant whose life prepared her for a career in espionage with the CIA, fall *whomp* in love. I don't know why, and the author doesn't tell us. They just do.

While they're reassessing their loyalties to their respective agencies, they watch History take its inevitable course. Crappy people and dreadful deeds and a giant choking cloud of misery finally envelop the two, already unsettled in their minds by Love, and cause them to try to...unoficially retire, let's say.

This does not go well.

Betrayal. Back-stabbing from many angles. Lots of terrible things are about to happen to Iván and Cristina, when she decides that she doesn't want to die screaming. She pulls out her trump card, plays it...and that's when the ugly turns mean. The ending of the book involves the worst, least excusable sort of cruelty to both of them. And it's not like there was no way it could happen. It has already, earlier in the book, in slightly different form.

What? It's a spy story! You were expecting the characters to take Pilates together and Iván to knit a baby blanky for their first-born while Cristina solves the mysteries of sourdough? This book's author might have a lot of right-wing axes to grind, but the book has its head on straight when it comes to Realpolitik! Henry Kissinger got nothin' on Author Naím in that regard.

I've given it three-and-three-quarters stars. In my world, that is quite respectable. I don't keep reading books that aren't rewarding me. There are too few eyeblinks left to waste 'em. So, while I'm not yodeling the praises of this gorgeous artifact of genius, I'm here to tell you that I didn't even once think, "you know what? Pearl-Ruling this bad boy now."

Considering my Pearl-Rule pages-to-read count is down to thirty-eight, that should tell you all you need to know.