Besides, he thought as he clattered the rented buggy after the others, he would be well recompensed for his twenty-four hours in Carville-by-the-Sea and his usual brilliant detective work. The reward offered by Wells Fargo for the return of the stolen funds was ten percent of the total — the not inconsiderable sum of $2,500 to fatten the coffers of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services.
A smile creased his whiskers. A reward of that magnitude might well induce Sabina to change her mind about having dinner with him at Marchand’s French Restaurant. It might even induce her to change her mind about another type of celebratory entertainment. Women were mutable creatures, after all, and John Quincannon was nothing if not persistent. One of these evenings he might yet be gifted with the only reward he coveted more than the financial...
The Jury Box
by Jon L. Breen
© 2007 by Jon L. Breen
While lawyers don’t dominate crime fiction as much as they do politics, they continue to be well represented among mystery writers and fictional sleuths. The first seven titles considered below all have lawyer protagonists, and all but two are written by lawyers.
**** Lisa Scottoline: Daddy’s Girl, HarperCollins, $25.95. Natalie Greco, a young University of Pennsylvania law professor, agrees to deliver a lecture at a minimum-security prison, where a riot breaks out and she becomes the recipient of a dying guard’s cryptic message to his wife. The neatly constructed mystery plot is a vehicle for Scottoline’s ever-present humor and her recurring themes of law versus justice and family dynamics, the latter illustrated by Nat’s relationship with her domineering father, her “man’s woman” mother, and the in-sensitive and juvenile brothers with whom her clueless boyfriend gets along all too well.
*** Margaret Maron: Hard Row, Warner, $24.99. Speaking of family relationships, no series depicts a larger extended family tree or concentrates more on domestic concerns than the saga of North Carolina’s Judge Deborah Knott. The plot concerns the plight of undocumented migrant workers and the murder of an unidentified man found one body part at a time in the rural countryside. Defendants met in brief visits to the judge’s courtroom include two men tried jointly for assaulting each other in a barroom brawl and an able-bodied driver whose car was towed for parking in a handicapped space. Appropriate chapter epigraphs are drawn from the 1890 book Profitable Farming in the Southern States. A solid entry in a distinguished series.
*** Richard North Patterson: Exile, Holt, $26. San Francisco lawyer David Wolfe, whose fiancée is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, defends an old girlfriend, Palestinian activist Hana Arif, on a charge of directing the suicide-bomber assassination of the prime minister of Israel. Of the books under review, this is easily the first choice for trial buffs, with a hundred pages of excellent courtroom give and take. A thorough and even-handed airing of both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute adds interest to a large-canvas novel with enough matter to justify its 556 pages. In this case, the romantic complications and travelogue notes often used for padding are an organic part of the whole.
*** Mercedes Lambert: Ghost-town, Five Star, $25.95. The third novel about Los Angeles attorney Whitney Logan, following Dogtown (1991) and Soul-town (1996), had been seeking a publisher for several years when the author (pseudonym of Douglas Anne Munson) died in 2003. The portrait of the dark side of L.A. is superbly done, and both Whitney and her film-crazed ex-prostitute legal secretary Lupe Ramos are engaging characters. Client Tony Red Wolf, a member of the city’s large Native American community, is accused of the beheading murder of Shirley Yellow-bird. The case is solved, but the highly unconventional ending, open to varying interpretations, will delight some readers while disturbing or irritating others. Michael Connelly writes a brief introduction, and the author’s literary executor, Lucas Crown, details the author’s difficult life in a lengthy afterword.
*** Harlan Coben: The Woods, Dutton, $26.95. New Jersey county attorney Paul Copeland, while raising a six-year-old daughter as a single parent, explores various mysteries of his family’s past, notably his teenage sister’s disappearance and presumed murder at the hands of a serial killer decades before, and prosecutes two rich white college boys accused of raping a black stripper. Whatever you think of the combination of wise-guy humor (including bizarre character names like Flair Hickory and Cingle Shaker) and heart-on-the-sleeve emotion, Coben’s gift for complex plotting and compulsive readability cannot be denied.
** Paul Levine: Trial and Error, Bantam, $6.99. In their fourth appearance, Miami lawyers Steve Solomon and Victoria Lord, partners and lovers, wind up on opposite sides when she is appointed to prosecute Gerald Nash, nephew of the State’s Attorney, on a felony murder charge. Allegedly, Nash’s accomplice in a dolphin liberation was shot by the aquatic theme park’s owner. As usual, Levine is very funny, and the story moves along nicely until the professional and personal climaxes sacrifice credibility for feel-good tidiness.
** Michele Martinez: Cover-Up, Morrow, $23.95. In her third case, federal prosecutor Melanie Vargas investigates the mutilation murder of Suzanne Shepard, a New York TV personality who exposes celebrity scandals. The plot and procedural details are interesting enough, but the hyped-up suspense and soap-opera elements are overdone, the prose and dialogue mostly flat. An exception is this wicked morsel of media satire, a comment from the victim’s producer: “We believe the best way to honor Suzanne’s memory is with innovative coverage of her murder. Please don’t interfere with our grieving process.”
*** Lloyd Biggle, Jr.: The Grandfather Rastin Mysteries, Crippen & Landru, $29 hardback, $19 trade paper. The octogenarian sleuth of Borgville, Michigan, first appeared in a 1957 issue of AHMM and made eleven appearances in EQMM between 1959 and 1972. These dozen are joined by two previously unpublished additions to a small-town series offering warmth, charm, and devious plotting. The first eight have headnotes by the author, who died in 2002, and his children contribute a brief introduction.
*** Aaron Elkins: Little Tiny Teeth, Berkley, $23.95. Skeleton Detective Gideon Oliver joins an Amazon River cruise arranged by a secrets-bearing botany professor surrounded by those who hate him most. Elkins has done stronger puzzle plots, but background and humor carry the day. The introduction to the travelers of the spaced-out expedition guide is one of the funniest scenes in recent memory.
From Rue Morgue Press come reprints of two books that are recent by the publisher’s preservationist standards: Stuart Palmer’s 1951 Hildegarde Withers novel Nipped in the Bud ($14.95) and Catherine Aird’s 1967 English village mystery A Most Contagious Game ($14.95). Both contain introductory notes by publishers Tom and Enid Schantz.
Pickpocket
by Marcia Muller
© 2007 by Marcia Muller
Art by Allen Davis
Marcia Muller is considered a pioneer in the mystery world for her creation of Sharon McCone, the first modern female P.I. The McCone series now has more than two dozen entries. (See The Ever-Running Man, Warner Books, 2007). For this story, however, she has borrowed a character from her husband, Bill Pronzini, to create a tale that partners his (The Carville Ghost).
❖
Sabina Carpenter put on her straw picture hat and contemplated the hatpins in the velvet cushion on her bureau. After a moment she selected a Charles Horner design of silver and coral and skewered the hat to her upswept dark hair. The hatpin, a gift on her last birthday, was one of two she owned by the famed British designer. The other, a butterfly with an onyx body and diamond-chip wings, was a gift from her late husband and much too ornate — to say nothing of valuable — to wear during the day.
Momentarily she recalled Stephen’s face: thin, with prominent cheekbones and chin. Brilliant blue eyes below dark brown hair. A face that could radiate tenderness — and danger. Like herself, a Pinkerton detective in Denver, he had been working on a land-fraud case when he was shot to death in a raid. It troubled Sabina that over the past few years his features had become less distinct in her memory,
as had those of her deceased parents, but she assumed that was human nature. One’s memories blur; one goes on.
She scrutinized her reflection in the mirror and concluded that she looked more like a respectable young matron than a private detective setting out to trap a pickpocket. Satisfied, she left her second-story Russian Hill flat, passed through the iron picket fence, and entered a hansom cab that she had earlier engaged. It took her down Van Ness Avenue and south on Haight Street.
The journey was a lengthy one, passing through sparsely settled areas of the city, and it gave Sabina time to reflect upon the job ahead. Charles Ackerman, owner of the Haight Street Chutes amusement park and an attorney for the Southern Pacific and the Market Street and Sutter Street Railroads, had come to the offices of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, the previous morning. Sabina’s partner, John Quincannon, had been out of sorts because she had just refused his invitation to dinner at Marchand’s French restaurant. Sabina, a practical woman, refused many of John’s frequent invitations. Mixing business with pleasure was a dangerous proposition; it could imperil their partnership, an arrangement she was very happy with as it stood...
And yet, she did not find John unattractive. Quite the opposite—
Sternly, Sabina turned her thoughts to the business at hand.
Charles Ackerman had a problem at his newly opened amusement park, on Haight Street near the southern edge of Golden Gate Park. Patrons had complained that a pickpocket was operating in the park, yet neither his employees nor the police had yet to observe any of the more notorious dips and cutpurses who worked the San Francisco streets. A clever woman, Ackerman said with a nod at Sabina, might be able to succeed where they had failed. John bristled at being excluded, then lapsed into a grumpy silence. Sabina and Ackerman concluded the conversation and agreed she would come to the park the next morning, after she had finished with another bit of pressing business.
The hack pulled to the curb between Cole and Clayton Streets. Sabina paid the driver and alighted, then turned toward the park. Its most prominent feature was a 300-foot-long Shoot-the-Chutes: a double-trestled track that rose seventy feet into the air. Passengers would ascend to a room at the top of the slides, where they would board boats for a swift descent to an artificial lake at the bottom. Sabina had heard that the ride was quite thrilling — or frightening, according to the person’s perspective. She herself would enjoy trying it.
In addition to the water slide, the park contained a scenic railway, a merry-go-round, various carnival-like establishments, and a refreshment stand. Ackerman had told Sabina she would find his manager, Lester Sweeney, in the office beyond the ticket booth. She crossed the street, holding up her slim flowered skirt so the hem wouldn’t get dusty, and asked at the booth for Mr. Sweeney. The man collecting admissions motioned her inside and through a door behind him.
Sweeney was at a desk that seemed too large for the cramped space, adding a column of figures. He was a big man, possibly in his late forties, with thinning red hair and a complexion that spoke of a fondness for strong drink. When he looked up at Sabina, his eyes, reddened and surrounded by pouched flesh, gleamed in appreciation. Quickly she presented her card, and the gleam faded.
“Please sit down, Mrs. Carpenter,” he said. “Mr. Ackerman told me you’d be coming this morning.”
“Thank you.” Sabina sat on the single wooden chair sandwiched between the desk and the wall. “What can you tell me about these pickpocketing incidents?”
“They have occurred over the past two weeks, at different times of day. Eight in all. Word is spreading. We’re bound to lose customers.”
“You spoke with the victims?”
“Yes, and there may have been others who didn’t report the incidents.”
“Was there anything in common that was reported?”
Sweeney frowned, thinking. The frown had an alarming effect on his face, making it look like something that had softened and spread after being left out in the rain. In a moment he shook his head. “Nothing that I can recall.”
“Do you have the victims’ names and addresses?”
“Somewhere here.” He began to shuffle through the many papers on his desk.
Sabina held up a hand and stood. “I’ll return to collect the list later. In the meantime, I trust I may have full access to the park?”
“Certainly, Mrs. Carpenter.”
Several hours later Sabina, who was familiar with most of San Francisco’s dips and cutpurses, had ascertained that none of them was working the Chutes. Notably absent were Fanny Spigott, dubbed “Queen of the Pickpockets,” and her husband Joe, “King of the Pickpockets,” who recently had plotted — unsuccessfully — to steal the two-thousand-pound statue of Venus de Milo from the Louvre Museum in Paris. Also among the absent were Lil Hamlin (“Fainting Lil”), whose ploy was to pass out in the arms of her victims; Jane O’Leary (“Weeping Jane”), who lured her marks in by enlisting them in the hunt for her missing six-year-old, then relieved them of their valuables while hugging them when the precocious and well-trained child was “found”; “Fingers” McCoy, who claimed to have the fastest reach in town; and Lovely Lena, true name unknown, a blonde so captivating that it was said she blinded her victims.
While searching for her pickpocket, Sabina had toured the park on the scenic railway, eaten an ice cream, ridden the merry-go-round, and taken a boat ride down the Chutes — which was indeed thrilling. So thrilling that she rewarded her bravery with a German sausage on a sourdough roll. It was early afternoon and she was leaving Lester Sweeney’s office with the list of the pickpocket’s victims when she saw an unaccompanied woman intensely watching the crowd around the merry-go-round. The woman moved foward, next to a man in a straw bowler, but when he turned and nodded to her she stepped a few paces away.
Sabina moved closer.
The woman had light-brown hair, upswept under a wide-brimmed straw picture hat similar to Sabina’s. She was slender, outfitted in a white shirtwaist and cornflower blue skirt. The hat shaded her features, and the only distinctive thing about her attire was the pin that held the hat to her head. Sabina — a connoisseur of hatpins — recognized it as a Charles Horner of blue glass overlaid with a gold pattern.
The woman must have felt Sabina’s gaze. She looked around, and Sabina saw she had blue eyes and rather plain features, except for a small white scar on her chin. Her gaze slid over Sabina, focused on a man to her right, but moved away when he reached down to pick up a fretting child. After a moment the woman turned and walked slowly toward the exit.
A pickpocket, for certain; Sabina had seen how they operated many times. She followed, keeping her eyes on the distinctive hatpin.
Fortunately there was a row of hansom cabs waiting outside the gates of the park. The woman with the distinctive hatpin claimed the first of these, and Sabina took another, asking the driver to follow the other hack. He regarded her curiously, no doubt unused to gentlewomen making such requests; but the new century was rapidly approaching, and with it what the press had dubbed the New Woman. Very often these days the female sex did not think or act as they once had.
The brown-haired woman’s cab led them north on Haight and finally to Market Street, the city’s main artery. There she disembarked near the Palace Hotel — as did Sabina — and crossed Market to Montgomery. It was five o’clock, and businessmen of all kinds were pouring out of their downtown offices to travel the Cocktail Route, as the Gay Nineties’ young blades termed it.
From the Reception Saloon on Sutter Street to Haquette’s Palace of Art on Post Street to the Palace Hotel Bar, the influential men of San Francisco trekked daily, partaking of fine liquor and lavish free banquet spreads. Women — at least respectable ones — were not admitted to these establishments, but Sabina had ample knowledge of them from John’s tales of the days when he was a drinking man. He had been an operative with the U.S. Secret Service, until the accidental death by his hand of a pregnant woman turned him into a drunkard; t
hose were the days before he met Sabina and embarked on a new, sober life...
Once again she forced her thoughts away from John Quincannon.
The woman she had followed from the amusement park was now well into the crowd on Montgomery Street — known as the Ambrosial Path to cocktail-hour revelers. Street characters and vendors, beggars and ad-carriers for the various saloons’ free lunches, temperance speakers and the Salvation Army band — all mingled with well-dressed bankers and attorneys, politicians and physicians. Sabina made her way through the throng, keeping her eye on the woman’s hat, brushing aside the opportunings of a match peddler. The woman moved along unhurriedly and after two blocks turned left and walked over to Kearney.
There the street scene was even livelier: palm readers, shooting galleries, and auction houses had their quarters there. Ever present were the shouting vendors and pitchmen of all sorts; fakirs and touters of Marxism; snake charmers and speech makers of all persuasions. It seemed every type of individual in the world had come to Kearney Street for the start of the evening. Sabina kept her eyes on the woman as she moved at a leisurely pace, stopping to finger a bolt of Indian fabric and then to listen to a speaker extol the virtues of phrenology. She moved deeper into the crowd, and Sabina momentarily lost her; seconds later she heard a faint cry and pushed her way forward.
A gent in a frock coat was bent over, his silk hat having fallen to the sidewalk. As he straightened, his face frozen in a grimace of pain, he reached inside his coat. Sudden anger replaced pain and he shouted, “Stop, thief!”
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 130, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 793 & 794, September/October 2007 Page 4