The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri *****

The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri intertwines two threads of Nuri Ibrahim’s journey from war-torn Syria to Yorkshire England: the brutal trip from Aleppo to refugee housing in England and the ordeal of asylum approval. After reliving Nuri’s nightmare, I realized that he was privileged. “You’re lucky you’re rich,” and “You’re English is very good.” To imagine the plight of the others is awful.

Before the war in Syria Nuri Ibrahim and his cousin Mustafa had a successful beekeeping business in Aleppo. During the hostilities, their business was destroyed. Nuri and Afra lost their two-year-old son Sami. Mustafa and Dahab lost their twelve-year-old son Firas. Mustafa’s family, wife and daughter Aya, made it safely to England before Nuri could convince Afra to leave the place where her son died and she was blinded.

The existence of a refugee is consumed by survival and waiting. In between brief instances of terror, such as crossing from Turkey to Greece in a small boat and nearly drowning, time is filled with finding food and shelter and navigating the bureaucracies. In addition to Nuri’s financial resources and English-language skills, he also benefits because Syrian refugees are given priority. Throughout his travels, he meets others who are not from Syria and might never move forward.

Nuri left the brutality of the war in Syria where boys were lined up and shot one by one before dumping their bodies in the river. His escape continued the violence with people drowning and boys being sold for sex, but it is mixed with a bit of hope, especially for Syrians, with money and fluent English. Even so, he does not avoid the savagery with murder and rape touching his family.

The book is beautifully written, but difficult to read. A heart-rending tale of how refugees struggle to find a better life.

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Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz *****

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz opens with Susan Ryland, the editor at Cloverleaf Books, presenting best-selling author Alan Conway’s ninth novel in the Atticus Pünd series: Magpie Murders. (Got that? It gets better). Halfway through the book, the novel-within-a-novel ends missing the finals chapters. Now Susan Ryland goes searching for those missing chapters and Alan Conway is murdered. This murder parallels the murder we just read. We now have two murder mysteries. Alan Conway’s unfinished mystery with Atticus Pünd as the detective, and Anthony Horowitz’s mystery with Susan Ryland as the detective. Ryland’s quest includes parallels with Atticus Pünd’s quest and editorial reflections on the art and tradition of murder mysteries. In the end, it all comes together.

The fictional Magpie Murders with detective Atticus Pünd ostensibly authored by Alan Conway takes place southwest of London near Bath (a city loved by Jane Austen). Magpie Murders with the detective (and fiction editor) Susan Ryland takes place northeast of London in East Anglia, a flat, rural area of England not distinguished by much. In one of the many parallels between the two tales, both detectives are based in London.

Anthony Horowitz is a writer with two British TV murder mystery series: Midsomer Murders and Foyle's War. Midsomer Murders is mentioned six times and Foyle’s War once. Many other mystery writers are mentioned. Agatha Christie gets a dozen mentions. One interest theme is the antipathy between authors and their detectives with many authors attempting to kill off their detectives. The book explicitly mentions Reichenbach Falls where Sherlock Holmes fell to his death, only to be resurrected later.

Susan Ryland, reflecting on the life of Alan Conway discusses puzzles hidden in mysteries. In each of the Atticus Pünd books, Alan Conway names his characters after birds, London tube stations, writers, or fountain pens. The characters in the Atticus Pünd story and those in the Susan Ryland one, have parallel names. Inspector Locke in East Anglia and Inspector Chubb in Bath. The ultimate joke is that Atticus Pünd is an anagram for the stupid ----. The final word is left as a puzzle for the reader.

In the exploration of murder mysteries, coincidences were impugned over and over. “I don’t like coincidences in novels, and particularly not in murder mysteries, which work because of logic and calculation. The detective really should be able to reach his conclusion without having providence on his side.” While our detectives are logical, the mysteries are not. A long string of improbable coincidences generates a matching set of red herrings. Of course, the detectives are not fooled.

With all the discussion of the conventions of murder mysteries, the end of Magpie Mysteries still manages to surprise.

On a personal note, the settings of Bath, London, East Anglia, and Crete are all familiar to me and that might have added to my enjoyment.

An enjoyable novel of nested mysteries and observations of the whodunit genre. Complex and enjoyable. A masterpiece.

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Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia *****

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia opens in Mexico City in the 1950s. Noemi’s father has received a disturbing letter from Catalina who had been taken to a distant rural village by her new husband. Noemi was dispatched to rescue her cousin. Upon arriving in High Place, Noemi finds a Victorian house atop a mountain. The house is dark. Catalina reports ghosts, while those in town say the place is cursed. Noemi is haunted by visions or nightmares. Clearly, something supernatural and malevolent is happening, but what? And can Noemi rescue her cousin?

The house is occupied by three servants and the four Doyles: Florence who imposed the house rules (no talking, no smoking, no guns, no leaving without permission), Francis (Florence’s son), Virgil (Catalina’s husband), and Howard (the ancient patriarch). The family was once rich from its silver mines, but all the workers have died and the mine is shut. The house is rotting with mold everywhere.

The founder wanted to emulate the English countryside. The designer, builders, and materials were all imported from England, including the dirt for the garden. Now all those people are buried in the graveyard and the Doyles are in the mausoleum.

Ruth Doyle killed as many of the Doyles as she could before committing suicide.

The Doyles had their own doctor caring for Catalina. Noemi brought in the doctor from town, who had never been to the house, but he couldn't help her cousin. Catalina requested a tincture from a healer in town. When Noemi brought it, it gave Catalina a seizure, and Florence confiscated it.

Noemi never gave up trying to learn the mystery and rescue her cousin. The more she learned, the worse it got.

A classic gothic story with elements of eugenics and incest. And romance.

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Caste by Isabel Wilkerson *****

BLM, racism, privilege, reparations. Do you feel these are oversimplifications of the complex situation of black Americans in the United States? Do you wonder if the real story of the last four centuries is more subtle and nuanced? Would you like a deeper understanding? Caste by Isabel Wilkerson is the book you want to read.

Wilkerson compares three caste systems: India, United States, and Nazi Germany. By comparing the similarities, the reader is enlightened about what happened in the United States from the settlement of Virginia to the current day. She directly addresses the mythologies of slavery and emancipation both.

One interesting contrast is post-WWII Germany and post-Civil War United States. A striking point is that Germany has chosen to erect monuments to commemorate the victims of Nazi Germany, while the U.S. commemorates the slaveholders. Germany has compensated the victims, while the U.S. has compensated the rebels.

Some people wonder why poor white Americans continue to vote for Republicans “against their own interests.” Wilkerson explains this. “Many voters, in fact, made an assessment of their circumstances and looked beyond immediate short-term benefits and toward, from their perspective, the larger goals of maintaining dominant-caste status and their survival in the long term. They were willing to lose health insurance now, risk White House instability and government shutdowns, external threats from faraway lands, in order to preserve what their actions say they value most—the benefits they had grown accustomed to as members of the historically ruling caste in America.”

Current projections predict that the white majority will be a minority around 2042. One possibility is that the United States will become more egalitarian by then. Another view suggests looking to South Africa for a view of the future. However, Wilkerson put forward a more cynical alternative. “The definition of whiteness could well expand to confer honorary whiteness to those on the border—the lightest-skinned people of Asian or Latino descent or biracial people with a white parent, for instance—to increase the ranks of the dominant caste.”

A comprehensive history of U.S. slavery and its continuing impact.

The Instrument of Death by David Stuart Davies ****

The Instrument of Death by David Stuart Davies is part of the 32-book series: The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Davies has authored eight of these volumes. In this adventure, Holmes is on the trail of the sadistic psychopath Gustav Caligari. Early in the story, the reader sees, and Sherlock intuits, that the murderer is a serial killer who uses hypnosis.

 A pleasant romp in the universe of Sherlock Holmes.

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