Woman Around Town’s Editor Charlene Giannetti and writers for the website talk with the women and men making news in New York, Washington, D.C., and other cities around the world. Thanks to Ian Herman for his wonderful piano introduction.
Few writers are more prolific and more creative than Anthony Horowitz. Not only has he written many popular TV series – Foyle’s War, Midsomer Murders,Injustice – but he also has penned the bestselling YA Alex Rider novels, and many adult mysteries. Perhaps the cleverest series is the Hawthorne one where he injects a fictional version of himself into the action. The fifth, following the Twist of the Knife, is Close to Death.
The action centers on an exclusive neighborhood in Richmond Upon Thames. With only six homes in this gated community, those who live there co-exist as good neighbors, respecting boundaries, but also getting together for social gatherings. All of that changes when a new couple, Giles and Lynda Kenworthy, move into the largest home, Riverview Lodge, with their two children, and upset the once convivial atmosphere. Giles’ gas-guzzling cars, loud parties, a smoke belching barbecue grill, and plans to build a swimming pool, ratchet up the tension. When Giles is found dead with a cross-bow bolt in his neck, there’s no shortage of suspects. Cracking this case will take more than run of the mill policing. Enter former Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne who wastes no time annoying the Richmond residents and current Detective Inspector Tariq Khan, who is assigned the case.
Although the Richmond murder is in Hawthorne’s rear view mirror, it’s about to be resurrected, thanks to Horowitz’s agent Hilda Starke. She wants the fifth book in the Hawthorne series and calls Horowitz to press him about turning in a new manuscript. After Twist of a Knife, where Horowitz barely escaped being charged with the murder of a theater reviewer who had trashed his new play, he’s not eager to work with Hawthorne again. But the terms of his contract give him no choice. After meeting with Hawthorne, the Richmond case seems to have the most promise for a new mystery.
Close to Death see-saws between the past and present – the past when Hawthorne and his assistant John Dudley investigate Giles’ murder, and the present, as Horowitz wrestles with trying to turn the thousands of pages of interviews and reports that Hawthorne gives him into a novel. It doesn’t help that Hawthorne is less than forthcoming about what clues led him to target the perpetrator. Horowitz also is annoyed that Hawthorne won’t introduce him to Dudley, shutting down an information source that could add details to the story.
The suspects are a motley group. Dr. Tom Beresford, who lives in the Gardener’s Cottage with his wife, Gemma, a jewelry designer, and his twin daughters, mourns the patient he lost because one of Giles’ cars blocked the driveway and made him late to his practice. Adam Strauss, who lives in the cottage dubbed The Stables with his second wife, Teri, is a chess grandmaster and often stays up late playing in online tournaments. He’s upset because the Giles children damaged a valuable chess set given to him by a Middle Eastern royal. Andrew Pennington, a widower, lives in Well House, and is also upset with the Giles children because they rode their skateboards through a garden he planted to remember his late wife. May Winslow and Phyllis Moore are two elderly, single women who, so they tell everyone, used to be nuns. When their beloved dog is thrown into a well and dies, they believe Giles had something to do with the nasty deed. Roderick Browne, a dentist, cares for his bedridden invalid wife, Felicity, whose window view in the Woodlands will be spoiled by the swimming pool planned by Giles. Also a possible suspect is Sarah, a gardener, who tends most of the gardens, but has her own reason for not liking Giles.
Close to Death is another enjoyable romp in the Hawthorne series. Horowitz no doubt has fun playing himself in this series. And we enjoy riding along.
Spring adventures and the warm weather invite hikes along with trips to botanical gardens and arboretums. Trees have been inspiration for poets and writers through the ages. We have gathered some beautiful and calming quotes that will inspire every Woman Around Town nature lover. Ponder a few the next time you are among the trees.
“Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.” – John Muir
“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Learn character from trees, values from roots and change from leaves” – Tasneern Harneed
“I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees.” – Henry David Thoreau
“In a forest of a hundred thousand trees, no two leaves are alike. And no two journeys along the same path are alike.” – Paulo Coelho
“Love is like a tree, it grows of its own accord, it puts down deep roots into our whole being.” – Victor Hugo
“Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” Warren Buffett
“Of all man’s works of art, a cathedral is greatest. A vast and majestic tree is greater than that.” – Henry Ward Beecher
“Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky.” – Kahlil Gibran
“The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.” – Nelson Henderson
“For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver.” – Martin Luther
“There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it.” – Minnie Aumonier
“In a forest of a hundred thousand trees, no two leaves are alike. And no two journeys along the same path are alike.” – Paulo Coelho
“The trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.”– Moliere
“Love is like a tree, it grows of its own accord, it puts down deep roots into our whole being.” – Victor Hugo
“Trees are sanctuaries.” – Herman Hesse
“Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.” – Winston Churchill
“We can learn a lot from trees: they’re always grounded but never stop reaching heavenward.” – Everett Mamor
“Be as useful as a tree! Give life to others; be shelter to everyone; grant fruits to all! Be good like a tree!” – Mehmet Murat Ildan
Who knew that Seattle was a hotbed of crime during the Great Depression? Hardboiled detective mysteries often were set in New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago where organized crime controlled speakeasies, bootlegging, prostitution, drugs, loan sharking, and drugs. Robert Dugoni, who lives in Seattle, discovered otherwise when going through old trunks in his attic. He came across large black books with red spines. Inside were newspaper clippings that had run in local newspapers during the 1930s, documenting a murder and a trial that dominated headlines for months.
Frankie Ray, a former boxer, was shot and killed by George Moore in the barroom of the Pom Pom Club, which Moore owned. A famous trial attorney, John J. Sullivan, represented Moore, who admitted to shooting Ray because he had “feared for his own life.” A novel defense strategy at that time. The trial featured a motley group of shady characters who seemed to be out of central casting. “A former journalist and attorney, I was mesmerized,” Dugoni writes in the acknowledgments of his new novel, A Killing on the Hill.
Dugoni delved further into the case and did research on organized crime in Seattle during the Depression. The result is A Killing on the Hill, which will remind many readers of the best by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Dugoni’s experience as a journalist and an attorney helps to bring the principals, as well as the settings, alive.
Dugoni keeps the name of the murdered man, Ray, but changes the accused killer to George Miller. His imagination produces lots of colorful characters. The main protagonist, fledgling reporter at the Seattle Daily Star William Schumacher, dubbed “Shoe,” by his boss, the newspaper’s publisher and editor, Howard Phishbaum, called “Phish,” will be recognizable to anyone in the news business who has chased big stories and deadlines. Sullivan remains as defense counsel and the prosecutor is Laurence McKinley. The courtroom scenes include lots of drama in the exchanges between the prosecutor, defense counsel, and their witnesses. Then there are the observers, not only members of the press, but those who were close to the murdered man and the one being charged with his killing. There’s more than one femme fatale, women who were involved with Ray and Moore.
The murder happens in the early hours at the Pom Pom Club. Shoe is surprised to get a call from Chief Detective Ernie Blunt, offering him the story. Of course Shoe is excited. He’s also a little confused. Why would Blunt single out him, rather than a more experienced reporter from a different newspaper with a larger circulation? Phish is thrilled, but Shoe remains on guard, especially when one of his rivals warns that he’s too green to cover such a big story. But Shoe’s access, thanks to Blunt, keeps him one step ahead of the other papers. Even Mrs. Alderbrook, who runs the boarding house where he rents a room, is impressed once Shoe’s stories are the talk of the city.
But the woman Shoe is trying to impress is Amara Giovacchini, who runs a bakery with her father. Shoe loves their cinnamon-raisin pastries, but it’s Amara who captures his heart. She is impressed with his newspaper scoops and the fact that in the Depression he has a full-time job and is making money. As a new reporter, however, Shoe is being paid pennies an inch by Phish. He’s also sending money to his family back in Kansas who are barely holding onto their home. Though Shoe works overtime covering the trial, he finds time to take Amara to the movies and is soon falling in love.
As the trial progresses, Shoe figures out that it’s all about the money. Ryan hid the money given to him by Miller but died without revealing the whereabouts of the treasure. Shoe becomes obsessed with finding the money but places himself in danger. He also faces a moral dilemma: if he finds the treasure, will he keep it? The funds could go a long way towards helping his family and supporting Amara once they get married. In the midst of the Depression, everyone seems to be on the take, including the judge overseeing the trial. But can Shoe live with himself if he becomes, essentially, a thief?
A Killing on the Hill is a great mystery and a fun read. Dugoni perfectly captures a time when newspapers, rather than the internet, delivered the stories that captivated the public and left readers eager for more.
