Customer Reviews

A Late Phoenix

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I recommend Robin Bailey's unabridged narration. As always, he's the perfect reader for an English cozy mystery, and a fine actor. He can slip into and out of the voices of young constable Crosby, an old man whose lungs were damaged by poison gas in WWI, an overweight woman with a bad leg in a doctor's office, and many more, all without missing a beat.

The Battle of Britain, of course, didn't just involve the bombing of London; even thirty years later, Lamb Lane in Berebury is still a bomb site. (The council and the owners have been fighting for years about the building plans.) Now that everyone has their act together, the bomb rubble is being cleared - and the excavator hits just the wrong (or right) place: the skeleton of a pregnant woman was buried on the site, dating back to the war. Even before the autopsy, Dr. Dabbe doesn't buy the theory that a bomb would have laid her out so neatly with no visible crush injuries, so Sloan is stuck with an investigation that the superintendent would be just as happy to write off as 'historical' rather than 'possible murder', but there are suggestive points: the absence of any identification - or wedding ring - on the body, for one. Other missing pieces include a hue-and-cry for a missing person (there wasn't any) and the required notification of the local archeologists about the construction (the notice never arrived - if it was ever sent). And when the archaeologists had arrived in spite of everything, someone had moved their pegs out of the danger zone.

Inspector Sloan, beginning his digging while the contractors are banned from continuing theirs, turns up various interesting tidbits: the memories of the older members of the Berebury force and the firefighting and rescue teams of the time, as well as the receptionist of the doctor's office across from the site (the old doctor himself died a few months ago). The Waite brothers, sons of the old couple who used to live in the bombed house, both left after the war, but only Harold inherited it, and promptly sold the site; Leslie, a black sheep, was disinherited. Why? And why did the self-made buyer want it but let it get bogged down in planning fights for so many years - or did someone else engineer the delay? And how and why did the clearance plans finally get approved?

Apart from interesting sidelights on living through bombing, not once but over and over again, we have Miss Tyrell, breaking in the new Dr. Latimer as the late Dr. Tarde's successor, and William Latimer's own attempts to find his feet in Calleshire's medical community as a first-generation doctor.

While I'm emphatically the right sort of audience for what we might call (for want of a better term) the genteel British mystery tradition, I found myself feeling entirely undernourished by the end of this book. Ms. Aird seems to have none of the requisite skills (beyond the rudimentary ability to tell her story in a coherent way) that keep readers returning to writers like Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh or even Patricia Wentworth (who, formulaic and inconsequential as she can be, at least usually writes about likable people with distinct personalities).

The details of the mystery at the heart of this book are solid enough, but she manages an unusual feat in the genre: an Inspector we feel we barely know and with whom we cannot really connect. And that's the most detailed of her characterizations! As the book begins, we are introduced to a Dr. Latimer and his receptionist, and they remain the most vividly drawn characters in the whole novel, but they are not really main characters at all. Everyone else in the town (developers, dotty old former Home Guard members, archeologists) have literally no apparent personalities at all -- Ms. Aird paints them so superficially and in so noncommital a nature that they never have any life on the page.

She does attempt to give some eccentricities or idiosyncrasies to some of the members of the Police force, but even these remedially filled-out characters are one-dimensional at best, from Inspector Sloan's meandering superior, obsessed with the hippies at "Dick's Dive" to the police doctor, who hints at a bit of the curmudgeonly, but only appears in about 8 pages total.

Weirdest of all, no-one feels real at all, a sense heightened by the oddity of WAY too many characters all randomly quoting obscure literary phrases at each other. I mean, we could believe that ONE character might do this, but Ms. Aird would have us believe that this whole town does this, including our ostensible hero Inspector Sloan "muttering" little quotes from plays or poetry while interviewing a witness or making official enquiries.

None of it rings true, it doesn't add up to anything, and unless you're just trying to get to sleep, I don't recommend this book to anyone. It's just a pale and insubstantial imitation of a kind of mystery writing that has been done better countless times.

There's nothing embarassing or unprofessional about the writing. There's just nothing of distinction or endearing quality about it either.

There's a strange familiarity I found with the characters of 'A Late Phoenix' which is only apparent in the greatest of writers (Crane, Zelazny, Fitzgerald, Tyler, and for the more 'mysterious' variety - Sayers, Stout, Tey, Christie, and Mortimer). Crosby is always great as the comic relief (always reminding me of friends I've had in school or more often than I'd care to think about, myself :P). Also of listening to the audio book, Bailey's performance is masterful and has a minimalist professonalism - he's no David Suchet...to his credit.
Aird is, in my opinion and rather arguably, one of the greatest mystery writers of all-time (Sayers, Stout, and Christie being the others).
I've read quite a few mysteries and this has to be one of my favorites because it doesn't just stick to the immediate mystery, there are countless other 'mini-mysteries' within it (like all good mysteries have). Also because the 'main mystery' behind this story is something to be solved on an incredibly difficult scale, because the protagonist must solve something that happened way way in the past (as it was Tey's 'A Daughter in Time').

An interesting read the way only the British can write. Set in current time, a flash back to the 1940's war time is necessary to figure out this one. Uniquely written to get the reader to follow the clues and the "detecting" strategies used by the characters. A good mix of medical and legal with local color of the times. The plot is well developed and if you enjoy a British mystery, this is one you will enjoy.

This features Ms Aird's regular series characters ,the police team from the fictious town of Berebury in the equally fictitious county of Calleshire .The pivotal event is the discovery of a skeleton on a construction site.It is that of a young ,pregnant female and is discovered under a mound of uncleared rubble left on what was a bomb target in the Second World War .At first it is assumed she was killed by the bomb but a post mortem reveals she was shot and her corpse undiscovered for over 30 years.(The book is set in the 1980's).The investigation is led by Detective inspector C P Sloan with the dubious aid of the egregious "Defective Constable"Crosby whose cruel nickname is the result of his considerable level of stupidity.

The solution of the crime is fairly routine and the killer not too hard to identify.What does give the book a decided lift is its humour .The pathologist Dr Drabbe has a deft line in morbid cynicism and the leader of the local force Superintendant Leyes is obsessed with acquiring a wide range of unrelated knowledge from his night college classes and expounding to anyone who cares to listen(and many who do not)on what he has gleaned from them.The local historians with their search for Saxon relics are gently satirised as unworldly and remote from life's daily concerns
There is also a sense of change in the air in this once genteel town -the traditional local cafe has gone to be replaced by a youth oriented trendy bar and the manners and deportment of the local youth bewilder the stauncly treaditonal golf loving Leyes

I like my crime novels to be grittier and tougher than this is but within the confines of its type it is a fair enough book and will appeal to lovers of the traditional cosy mystery ,those who like Christie and Sayers and similarly genteel crime authors

Ms. Aird is a master storyteller! Her books are wonderful examples of the tight detective story. My only complaint is that they are too short. I can finish them in about an hour and I for one would like more time to savour her craftsmanship. In this book Cheif Inspector Sloane is taxed with finding the identity of a skeleton that had been shot 25 to 30 years ago. Murder was definitely the cause of death in this case, so Sloan is on the hunt again for a murderer. I think the best part of a Catherine Aird book is the wry humour, and of course, the inimitable Leeyes (Sloane's superior officer). While Sloane is trying to identify his 25-year-old corpse, and to determine whether or not it was indeed murder, another very recent body turns up. What is the connecting thread between the two murders? Catherine Aird is a true delight!

Ms. Aird is a master storyteller! Her books are wonderful examples of the tight detective story. My only complaint is that they are too short. I can finish them in about an hour and I for one would like more time to savour her craftsmanship. In this book Cheif Inspector Sloane is taxed with finding the identity of a skeleton that had been shot 25 to 30 years ago. Murder was definitely the cause of death in this case, so Sloan is on the hunt again for a murderer. I think the best part of a Catherine Aird book is the wry humour, and of course, the inimitable Leeyes (Sloane's superior officer). While Sloane is trying to identify his 25-year-old corpse, and to determine whether or not it was indeed murder, another very recent body turns up. What is the connecting thread between the two murders? Catherine Aird is a true delight!

In this installment of the C.D Sloan series by Catherine Aird called "A Late Phoenix", our Inspector is called to a scene where a body was found near a bombsite from WWII. At first, it just looks like a case of another casuality of war, but soon, the Calleshire C.I.D discovers that it is a case of murder, and that the murderer is still alive and still looking to keep his past evil deeds buried. Aird does quite well here with a little bit of humor mixed with good detective work.