Review of "Mother-Daughter Murder Night: A Novel of Suspense" by Nina Simon

 

 

Beth Rubicon and her 15-year-old daughter Jacqueline (Jack) live in a little house beside Elkhorn Slough in Monterey Bay, California.



Beth is a nurse in a long-term care facility.....





.....and Jack is a high schooler who works part-time for the Kayak Shack, as a kayak tour guide on the slough.





Beth's mother Lana Rubicon lives in Los Angeles, 300 miles south of Monterey Bay. Lana is a commercial real estate mogul who doesn't 'do sick', so Lana's shocked to learn she has several brain tumors that need to be removed ASAP.



Lana and Beth have had a distant relationship for many years, but with her health crisis, Lana reaches out to Beth for help. The upshot is that Beth convinces Lana to have surgery at Stanford, and to recuperate at Beth's home in Monterey Bay. Thus Lana is soon on her way north, with five overstuffed suitcases and a box of files and legal pads.



Four months later, post-surgery, Lana has taken over her granddaughter Jack's room, and is undergoing chemotherapy. By now Lana has lost her position as a Los Angeles real estate shark, and she's frustrated and bored. To fill her time, Lana has taken to gazing out at the slough with her binoculars, watching the people and wildlife.

Very late one night, Lana sees a man on the far side of the slough, dumping something from a wheelbarrow. It strikes Lana as odd, but for the moment, Lana doesn't think much about it. Little does Lana know, this is a harbinger of things to come.



A couple of days later, Jack has the 11:00 A.M. shift as a kayak tour guide, and during the trek, a body is discovered at the side of the slough. 'There, floating in the muck was a person. A mud-covered balloon of a person. Facedown in the water. Not moving, wearing a red Kayak Shack life jacket.' Jack tries to help, to no avail. The person is identified as land trust surveyor Ricardo Cruz.....who was murdered.



Before long, police detectives come to Jack's home to interview her. The questions are aggressive, and Jack's grandmother Lana (whom Jack calls Prima) realizes the cops suspect Jack of killing Cruz. So Prima, who needs something to do with her time, decides to find the murderer herself.



Beth becomes very concerned about the entire situation. She wants her daughter Jack to be found blameless, but she doesn't want her mother Lana looking for a murderer. As it turns out, Jack is quickly cleared of suspicion, but Prima is on a roll, thinking of the case as 'her investigation.'

From this point on, there's no holding Lana back. She makes good use of her womanly wiles, designer clothes, elegant wigs, and 4-inch-heels to bedazzle men, and worm out the information she needs.



Prima also gets Beth and Jack to help with the inquiries, and the threesome discover there may well have been a second murder, disguised as a natural death. There are also shenanigans concerning the land around the slough, which could well be a motive for murder.



The joint sleuthing draws the three gals into danger, and also brings them closer as a family, and seals their bond.

The story has the wonderful ambiance of coastal California, and the descriptions of the slough, with the tides and currents that move a body here and there, are fascinating.



This hybrid thriller/cozy mystery is a fine debut novel for author Nina Simon. Recommended to suspense fans.

I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Jane Oppenheimer, who does a fine job.

 Rating: 3.5 stars

Review of "The Trees: A Novel" by Percival Everett

What would happen if the 'spirits' of people who'd been horribly mistreated in the past - beaten, tortured, lynched, shot, etc. - came back to get revenge. That's the theme of this satire, which is both hilarious and disturbing.

The current trouble starts in Money, Mississippi, which has a notorious past. In 1955, a 14-year-old Black youth called Emmett Till was murdered in Money after he allegedly 'offended' a white woman called Carolyn Bryant. For this misdeed, Carolyn's husband Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam viciously beat, mutilated, and shot Emmett, then threw him in the Tallahatchie River. Bryant and Milam were found 'not guilty' by an all white jury.




Emmett Till


Bryant's Grocery Store where Emmett Till allegedly spoke to Caroline Bryant

Money, Mississippi hasn't changed much since those Jim Crow days, and in the 21st century it's still full of poorly educated, racist bumpkins who casually (and constantly) use the n-word to refer to Black people.

The bigoted hayseeds - and everyone else in Money - are shocked when Junior Junior Milam (the son of J.W. Milam), who raises hogs, is found murdered in his back room.



Junior Junior has a bloody bashed-in skull; a length of rusty barbed wire is wrapped around his neck several times; and one of his eyes is gouged out. Ten feet from Junior Junior is the VERY dead body of a viciously beaten Black man in a blue suit.



When law enforcement officers arrive to survey the scene, Deputy Sheriff Braden Brady eyes Junior Junior and observes, "Lord, Lordy, Lord, Lord, Jesus. Looky at that. His balls ain't on him! I think they're in the n---'s hand."



Deputy Delroy Digby agrees and says, "Don't touch nothing. Don't touch a gawddamn thing. We got ourselves some kind of crime here. Lordy."



Sheriff Red Jetty arrives at the scene and sends the bodies to the coroner, a quack called Doctor Reverend Cad Fondle.



Soon afterwards, Fondle calls the sheriff and says, "We got us a problem. Somebody done stole that n----'s body."



The Black man's body reappears, however, when Wheat Bryant (the son of Roy Bryant), who has no job and does nothing, is found in his bathroom.



Wheat is dead and bloody, with barbed wire around his neck just like Junior Junior. Nearby is the 'missing' Black corpse, holding Wheat's testicles in his fist.



Wouldn't you know it, the dead Black man vanishes from the morgue once again, only to reappear at the death scene of old infirm Carolyn Bryant (the woman who accused Emmett Till), who's (seemingly) been frightened to death.

Law enforcement officials in Money are clearly out of their depth, and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation (MBI) sends two agents to investigate the crimes - Special Detectives Jim Davis and Ed Morgan, both of whom are Black.





Hearing the MBI is on its way, Sheriff Jetty grouses, "Well, that's just f--- dandy. City cops coming up here to the sticks to help the hillbillies. Don't worry. I'll be nice to the sumbitches."

As it turns out, the corpse of the 'roaming Black man' can't be identified, but he seems to have an uncanny resemblance to Emmett Till.

Before long, these 'revenge' crimes spread around the country. Racists and Ku Klux Klansmen are found dead in Illinois, Minnesota, Wyoming, and California, and in each case there's an unidentified minority corpse nearby, clutching the victim's severed testicles.

MBI Special Detectives Jim Davis and Ed Morgan are joined by FBI Special Agent Herberta Hind, who also happens to be Black.



Jim, Ed, and Herberta determine that Money, Mississippi is the nexus of the crime wave, and they suspect that 105-year-old Mama Z, an African-American root doctor, is involved somehow.



Mama Z has a record of every person lynched in the United States since 1913, when her father - a voting rights activist - was strung up. Mama Z's files stretch to the thousands, and include men, women, children, and Asians. Speaking to a professor who's studying her files, Mama Z observes, "Less than one percent of lynchers were ever convicted of a crime. Only a fraction of those ever served a sentence."

Mama Z's furious great-granddaughter Gertrude observes, "Everybody talks about genocides around the world, but when the killing is slow and spread over a hundred years, no one notices. Where there are no mass graves, no one notices. American outrage is always for show. It has a shelf life."



As the story reaches it's climax, and the crime wave continues to escalate, it appears the outrage has taken on a life of its own.



All this sounds grim, but the book is hilariously funny.

Many of the laughs come from the novel's farcical characters. For example, Wheat Bryant's wife Charlene is called Hot Mama Yeller (her CB handle), even by her children. When little Wheat Jr. needs to use the toilet, he whines, "Hot Mamma Yeller, I gots to pee real bad."



And at one of the murder scenes, Doctor Reverend Cad Fondle falls to his knees and prays, "Oh, Gawd Jesus, I knows you have a plan, but us poor White mortals is scared to death down here with this strange n---- you keep sending. Is he an omen, oh Lawd, a sign, or is he the devil, and should we dismember him and burn his body right away?"

Deputies Digby and Brady also generate some laughs. Faced with a flat tire on their patrol car, the deputies stand looking at the tire, scratching each other's heads. At first they scratched their own heads, but that told them nothing. But as soon as Brady scratched Digby's head, Digby said, 'Maybe we had oughta change that tire'."



More laughs come from observing White bigots around Black detectives. The rednecks can't help starting to say n-----. Then they look up and change their tunes pronto.



Author Percival Everett is a Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California whose books are often satirical, meant to explore race and identity issues in America. Everett certainly highlights such issues in this compelling and timely book.

I was appalled by the history that underlies the book, but very entertained by the narrative. My one quibble would be the incompletely resolved ending, because I wanted to know more. Still, I'd highly recommend the novel.

 Rating: 4.5 stars