Customer Reviews

Connecticut Yankee in Criminal Court (Mark Twain Mystery)

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Mr. Heck has a very good grip on the world of Mark Twain and New Orleans in this book. His discriptions of the wonderful foods on this City made me hungry the entire book. Mr. Heck weaves a very good mystery. He also understands the culture of the time and explains it very well. The author captures Mark Twain's humor in his characters, many times I laughed out loud. Mr. Heck's books are worth the read.

A fun little mystery, this novel is narrated by Mark Twain's secretary, Wentworth. While in New Orleans, Twain & Wentworth end up being asked to help solve a mystery, which is basically the meat of the book. The ending felt a tad rushed; the final "aha!" moment seemed to come out of nowhere to me, but all in all, this was an amusing mystery, and the use of Mark Twain as protagonist was rather clever.

"A Connecticut Yankee in Criminal Court", as probably everyone knows by now, is the sophomore effort by writer Peter Heck. It follows his earlier successful Mark Twain mystery "Death on the Mississippi". This book showed a lot of promise from page one, with the introduction of George Washington Cable as a featured character. Heck did not spend a lot of time explaining who Cable was, a decision which pleased me. I knew immediately that Heck had done some homework on New Orleans history and I sat back, eagerly anticipating an interesting and sly mystery full of bold, well-written characters and inside jokes on New Orleans historical figures. What I got was something less than that. The story, a vague and meandering tail involving the poisoning death of a prominent white Orleanian and the black cook falsely accused of his murder, was indeed an entertaining one, but offered nothing new to the now-bursting ranks of the New Orleans mystery subgenre. Writers plotting mysteries set in the Crescent City now offer us one of three choices; murder against a Mardi Gras backdrop, old family intrigue or corrupt politicians. Sometimes, if they are especially clever, they will mix and match these story elements, but for the most part, they are simply not that clever. For me, the mysteries that work best are the ones that use New Orleans as a setting, but accept the fact that Orleanians have to make groceries, pick up the laundry, clean out their rain gutters and fight traffic like the rest of us. Some writers present a New Orleans whose residents do nothing but fling beads from Mardi Gras floats, run for office and go to fais do dos with their old Cajun families who have so many secrets they are fairly flowing from the closets. But I digress. As a favor to Cable, crotchety old Sam Clemens and his secretary, Wentworth Cabot, fresh off a murder investigation on a Mississippi riverboat, decides to find evidence to free the black cook. Along the way he meets Buddy Bolden, considered the father of modern jazz (although no recordings of his work exist), Marcus Keyes, Tom Anderson and "the widow Paris", whom you will recognize if you know anything about New Orleans history. If not, I'll keep the secret. It obviously vexed author Heck to no end that voodooienne Marie Laveau the second died in 1887 and was not available historically for this 1890's romp through the old quarter, because he felt the need to recreate her in the guise of Eulalie Echo, whom the characters spend the rest of the book self-consciously calling "`Lalie". Get it? `Lalie Echo = Marie Laveau. Jeez. The mystery seems to be going along nicely until... The mystery is solved Perry Mason-style, when `Lalie Echo calls all of the principle characters together at a voodoo ceremony and tells them that Damballah, the snake-spirit, knows one of them is guilty and will haunt their dreams unless the guilty party confesses. Then the guilty party confesses. Sheesh. Overall this book was fun, but not very challenging. A good read for a rainy day or a long bus trip, but don't make a point of rushing out to get it. Patrick Burnett King of the Soapbox Derby