Last Chants (Willa Jansson Mystery) [Mass Market Paperback]

Lia Matera (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1997 | Series: Willa Jansson Mystery

Willa Jansson becomes a fugitive, along with an old family friend, mythology scholar Arthur Kenna, the prime suspect in a murder, and finds herself caught up in a bizarre world of eccentric high-tech software designers as she investigates the crime to clear her and Arthur's names. Reprint. AB. NYT. "

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In Last Chants, Willa Jansson jumps to the defense of Arthur Kenna, an eccentric mythologist. Suspected of having done away with his assistant, an Indian shaman who was helping him program a computer in the mystic arts, Arthur flees to a cabin in the Santa Cruz Mountains with Willa in tow. As she searches for clues at the scene of the crime, a magnetic power spot in the wilderness that attracts New Agers and computer junkies, she flushes out more than she bargained for, including two industrial spies, a family of mushroom hunters and a hairy, naked man who claims to be the demigod Pan. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Matera's skills make an accomplished, compelling mystery of material that could have been a lightweight, New Age yarn. En route to a new job in downtown San Francisco, lawyer Willa Jansson, last seen in the Edgar-nominated Prior Convictions, is appalled to spot an old family friend, elderly professor Arthur Kenna, holding a man at gunpoint. Rather than leave Arthur to the mercy of the police, Willa pretends that Arthur has taken her hostage, grabs him and hares off to hide him out near Santa Cruz, in the mountain cabin of a friend, PI Edward Hershey. Arthur is as baffled by Willa's actions as he was by the stranger who thrust the gun at him and began yelling "'help," but he knows exactly what to do in the nearby woods: visit Bowl Rock, where his assistant, shaman Billy Seawuit was "practically disemboweled" only days earlier. While Arthur, an ethnobotanist and mythologist, internally visits other worlds to learn more about Billy's fate, Willa and Edward scope out a variety of strange characters: Galen Nelson, who reportedly brought Billy to the area to help develop a computer program meant "to access nonordinary states"; Toni, Galen's volatile wife; and a naked, reed-playing gentleman who roams the forest and eloquently tells the tale of the Greek demigod Pan. Although neither internal nor external investigation prevents a second murder, Willa experiences a mind-expanding week in which she learns that life can be much more complex and much simpler than she ever thought.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Pocket (May 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671880969
• ISBN-13: 978-0671880965
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,372,449 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars New Age Murder Mystery, November 28, 2004

By 

Erika Mitchell (E. Calais, VT USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Last Chants (Audio Cassette)

This is a Willa Jansson mystery. On a crowded street, Willa meets a family friend named Arthur Kenna holding a gun on someone in front of a policeman. Willa manages to get the Kenna away with her, and together they escape into the mountains, only to find out that the friend's assistant was murdered near their mountain retreat, just before Willa met Kenna on the street. Indeed, the village where their mountain hideout is located is filled with interesting characters, including a firm called Cyber-Delics, which is working on a project called Cyber-Shaman. It seems everyone Willa meets has a secret mystical history. It's up to her to sort out the characters and figure out who the killer was before he - or she - strikes again.

The story is filled with many New Age themes, such as shamanism, mysticism, and mythology. Unfortunately, Matera doesn't quite have a firm understanding of computer technology. At one point, she has Willa pondering how vastly different the world would have been if Apple had managed to kill off Bill Gates before he founded Microsoft-we would never have had Windows, she concludes. True, we might not have had an operating system called Microsoft Windows, but the Windows interface borrowed (stole?) so much from Apple that our computer screens might not have looked that different at all, with or without Bill Gates.

The choice of Alexa Bauer as a narrator for this book was quite inappropriate. Willa tells this story from her point of view, and she is a Californian. Bauer, on the other hand, has a British accent. This difference in accents could possibly be overlooked, except at one point Willa relates a conversation with a person with a British accent, and complains that she couldn't identify which part of the UK the person is from because she doesn't know her British accents. To hear this coming from the mouth of a Brit with a strong British accent is odd, indeed. Bauer uses British rather than American pronunciations of certain words, such as chamois as "sham-wa" (accent on second syllable). She also has very little knowledge of computer technology, at one point saying that someone's computer had Ad-dob (accent on first syllable) Premier loaded on it.

Overall, the story left me with marginal interest, at best. The material about technology was inaccurate and preposterous, and the New Age elements were rather puerile. The narration was bad, but at least the story was mostly coherent.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Matera is one of the best!, May 1, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Last Chants (Willa Jansson Mystery) (Mass Market Paperback)

Willa might be a lawyer but it seems that between landing in jail for two months and then promptly placing herself in a situation where she becomes a fugitive on the run, she is definitely in the wrong profession. What else could Willa do when she sees a cop about to arrest her parents' best friend,Arthur, a two-time convicted radical, who if convicted again, will be sent away for life. Willa
executes a split-second diversion that takes the two of them away from the scene, turning them into fugitives.

.....With nowhere else to go, she and Arthur turn to Edward, Willa's former boyfriend, who owns an isolated cabin where they hide out. The cabin is close to where the incident that nearly led to Arthur's arrest occurred. Willa becomes super-sleuth expecting to deal with an ordinary criminal investigation. She does not expect to dive into a psycho-medical mind state where computers can smell, the old Gods come to life, and she enters the spirit world. Yet all this and more must be done if Willa and her cohorts are to extricate themselves from circumstances that can lead them into prison.

......Readers will find Last Chants an unexpected gift that will stay with them a long time after they finish reading it. Talented Lia Matera places this tale on two planes of existence, the mortal and the supernatural, that somehow readers accept quite easily. This is a highly recommended read for those who prefer the unique in their reading experiences.

.......Harriet Klausner

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lia's Books Crack Me Up...This is No Exception, March 29, 2004

By 

PrairieMan (Southwest USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Last Chants (Willa Jansson Mystery) (Mass Market Paperback)

It helps to be an old leftie and a bit on the fringe, culturally, to enjoy Lia Matera's books. I can see where conservatives might not 'get' her, but I even wonder about that.

I discovered Lia Matera just last week at the library. I picked up, "Star Witness," off the paperback mystery rack, a section I never usually glance at. I was on my way out having picked up the books I wanted. Sometimes I have my best luck, though, discovering new authors when I swipe a few books off the shelves without thinking. The primary colors of the cover of the Star Witness book looked stupid to me, but I thought, hey, trust your intuition and grabbed the paperback. What a find! (I read it, and skipped the other books I'd chosen, so I could go back the next day and get more of Lia's books!)

I have read two of her other novels since then (note the dark circles under my eyes)...both Willa Jansson mysteries. I've had no problem following characters that were developed in her other novels, but that's probably because Matera's writing style is what I'm most interested in-she knows how to surprise her readers with metaphors and comments that hit the funny bone and ring true. She keeps her characters fresh and true to life in the most unlikely, whacked-out or scary circumstances.

In 'Last Chants', Lia did her reseach in some detail (as she did about UFOs, in "Star Witness") about the Pan mythology. She provides a kind of lazy-woman's quicktime education for her smart,but laid back readers, augmented by her outlandish humor. You won't believe the plot twists and the kinds of things she forces her characters to do.

I haven't found an author I felt addicted to this much since I was introduced to Alice Hoffman, years ago, when depression and fantasy were, in retrospect, my thing. Now I'm happy that I can barely keep up with Lia's high energy, spaced-out realism and lawyerly precision of plot.

In "Last Chants" there was, for me, not a moment of unnecessary description...the story consistently moved forward with every page. Compact flashes of Willa's inner states kept her character sensitive, smart and smart alec, to my pleasure. Highly recommended.

I spent another night reading "Havana Twist," a cutting romp through taudy, tourismo, politico Cuba. A memorable line I still recall was Willa's description of Havana's low ceiling airport, built "in the architectural style of a campground bathroom." I cracked up at that comparison and couldn't read for a few minutes. It could have been that a dose of my semi-narcotic prescription cough syrup for this damn winter hacking was kicking in for the night, but I laughed 'til I wept.

I love this author-and I've never been a mystery fan before-but I GOTTA get some sleep! I'm just as happy I didn't discover Lia Matera earlier in life. I have many hours of mystery and fun ahead. If I burn out, I'll take a break and read some Margaret Atwood to bring me down, then back dive in for more.