Spider Woman's Daughter by Anne Hillerman

 I've read a few of the Tony Hillerman mysteries set around the Navajo Nation.  When I read a mystery novel, I'm less interested in the whodunnit aspect, and more interested in the background details, especially if the setting is a place or way of life I'm unfamiliar with.  Reading about the Navajo Nation from the point of view of two Navajo police officers has been fascinating, even though Tony Hillerman was not Navajo himself.

When Tony Hillerman died, his daughter wrote a new novel in the Lt. Leaphorn and Officer Chee series, so I was interested to see how she carried on the story.  Anne Hillerman was already a journalist, but this was her first novel.

Well, the first thing she did was almost kill off one of her dad's main characters!  Retired Lt. Leaphorn is shot, and Sergeant Chee and his wife, Officer Bernie Manuelito, have to solve the mystery.  So this story is from Bernie's point of view.

As an ex-archaeologist, I was very interested in all the details about Navajo pottery and the various archaeological sites in the plot, and as someone with an interest in fibre arts I was interested in the details about Navajo rugs.  Bernie's mother was a weaver of Navajo rugs, so that's one meaning of the title.

Anne Hillerman continued the series, and is now on her sixth novel - I'll be interested to read more of them.

Mr Punch

 I've been reading Christopher Fowler's blog for a while now (at www.christopherfowler.co.uk) and enjoying it, so I thought it was about time I read one of his Bryant and May mysteries, about two elderly coppers in the Peculiar Crimes Unit.  The first one I found was Bryant & May and The Memory of Blood, which I think is quite late in the series.

It concerns Mr Punch - or at least a series of murders on a Punch and Judy theme, which leads Bryant into researching the history of the Punch and Judy show.

I was already fairly familiar with the history of Punch and Judy - Mr Punch is the villain in the first Rivers of London book by Ben Aaronovitch, and turns up here and there in the later books of the series, though in the Bryant and May book no real magic is involved.  I was surprised, though, that in all the discussions of the traditional characters and puppets used in Punch and Judy shows, the crocodile was never mentioned - I remember the crocodile very clearly from when I used to watch the Punch and Judy show on Blackpool beach.  The booth was built into the back of a van that drove up and down the sands, stopping at intervals to do the show:

This is what I remember - the picture was taken in 1963.

 There are digressions into the history of the building used by the PCU - once used by Alistair Crowley, and with a fairground booth automaton of Madame Blavatsky in the attic, and theatre history, as the suspects are all part of the cast and crew of a new play at a recently re-opened London theatre, and that was all fascinating.  I tend to be more interested in the background details of a murder plot, rather than the whodunit aspect.  There's also a B-plot which starts off as something quite commonplace (woman has troublesome neighbours) and ends up being a lot more sinister, and personal to Bryant.  There were also some very funny moments, mostly involving Bryant.

I'm going to be looking out for more Bryant and May stories now.

Saturday at FantasyCon

After breakfast at the Town Crier, Saturday morning started for me in the lovely courtyard at the heart of the Queen's Hotel:

I was planning for a full day of attending panels - as much as I could manage while remembering to eat!

First was Feminism and Feminist Themes in Genre Fiction, in the Albert Room. Teika Bellamy, who I'd met the previous night, was on this one, along with Cheryl Morgan (member of the Women's Equality Party, among many other things).
One of the questions was what constituted anti-feminist themes, to which the immediate answer was "Chainmail bikinis!"
It was also pointed out that there is a clear difference between novels and TV/film - and more people are likely to have seen something on TV than read a novel, so it's a pity that films and TV series are lagging behind the novels in terms of feminist themes. It surprised one panellist that Star Trek Discovery had gender parity in casting, which is a step forward (but problems with the gay relationship, so still some way to go....).
The book edited by FT Barbini, Gender Identity and Sexuality in Science Fiction and Fantasy, from Luna Press, was recommended - the book later won the British Fantasy Award for Best Non-Fiction.
Black Shuck Press are also re-publishing work by lost women writers.
Another writer who was recommended was JY Yang, so I was pleased that I'd picked up her Descent of Monsters at Forbidden Planet earlier this year (that list of books I want to read keeps getting longer and longer!).

Next, in the largest panel room, the Victoria, was Breaking the Glass Slipper. I had no idea what this might be when I went in, but it turned out to be a live podcast (they were also up for a British Fantasy Award, but beaten by Anansi Boys). That was a highly entertaining session, with Claire North the third Guest of Honour and RJ Barker bouncing ideas off each other and being very funny. Claire North also writes as Kate Griffin - I'm sure I've seen some of her books around somewhere.
Top tip from the panel was that koalas have human-like fingerprints, so if you're planning a murder always take a koala bear with you.
They talked about plotting and how they plan stories out. RJ Barker said that "My subconscious is looking after me because I'm an idiot."
They also talked about murder mysteries, with RJ Barker saying that "There's no pity in Miss Marple! Even Sherlock Holmes sometimes gives a villain a 24 hour head start, but Miss Marple would never do that." And, in answer to a comment that Sherlock Holmes was chill: "I don't think Sherlock's chill - he's off his tits!"

Following on in the same room was the Writing for Children panel, with Francesca Barbini (who edited the Gender Equality book and runs Luna Press as well as being an academic) and Pauline Kirk on the panel. I didn't write any notes down for this panel because I was too busy agreeing with what they said about children's imaginations and some favourite fantasy books. Several of the panel go into schools to work with children, so they see what children are interested in first hand.

And following on from that was the Religion in Genre Fiction panel, with a diversity of religious groups represented. Rosanne Rabinowitz writes about Jewish Kabbala and socialism in early 20th century Russia, Tasha Suri has a Hindu and Sikh background and her epic fantasy based around Indian mythology is out shortly, and Iain Grant has written a book about Satan losing his job and going to live in Birmingham. There was also a Quaker lady who had been an activist in Palestine. Again, I was too swept up in the discussion to take notes!

Archaeological Mystery Novels

This week I finally got round to reading two novels that I'd been getting round to for some time. Both have an archaeologist in the starring role, and both are murder mysteries. In real life, archaeologists are called in by the police to excavate when bones are found, and the techniques of archaeology are designed for collecting evidence, but writers so often get it wrong when they try to write about archaeology. I still have nightmares about that episode of Murder, She Wrote where the trenches were laid out in a style not seen since the 1950s and Jessica finds a valuable artefact - a gold plate, I think - and jumps up and down waving it in the air! And then there was that awful BBC series which started with an episode about the True Cross, and had the student digger inviting a member of the public down into the trench, and later wandering around with the lump of True Cross under her arm, instead of recording it properly! Come on, people, at least give it a context number!

Fortunately, The Lifers' Club is written by Francis Pryor, who is a real archaeologist who has written several very good non-fiction books on archaeology - and reading the descriptions of archeological digs here took me right back to the days when I was a circuit digger. Reading about setting up the grid, and dumpy levels (used for surveying), and trowelling back - it was like relaxing into something when you don't even realise you've been tense.
The mystery was interesting and complex as well, involving an "honour killing" in a Turkish family and the Turkish family's links to one of the archaeologists who were working on a dig when the young woman disappeared, who has since done very well for himself and now runs his own company. Our hero, Alan Cadbury, goes to work for the company, and at the same time is trying to prove the innocence of the young man convicted of the murder of his sister, who is a member of the Lifers' Club of the title in the nearby high security prison.
There was an interesting sub-plot about a Victorian pillar of the community who turned out not to be such a nice man after all, thanks to discoveries at a dig in a churchyard, which ties into the main plot when several of the Saxon skeletons they dig up turn out to come from Eastern Europe.
I really enjoyed this one, and will be looking out for the sequel. Francis Pryor also writes a good blog, with a link in the side bar.

Elly Griffiths isn't an archaeologist herself, but she's done her research very well. I first became aware of her at the Hay Festival a few years ago, when she was sharing the stage with Phil Rickman (our local mystery writer) and someone else whose name I've forgotten. Elly Griffiths stuck in my memory because she was writing about a woman archaeologist in Norfolk. I spent two years digging on the Norwich Castle Mall excavation, and as soon as my husband got his driving licence and a Rascal van we spent every weekend going out looking at Norfolk churches. So this is an area I used to know pretty well.
I finally got my hands on a copy of The Crossing Places, the first in her series about Ruth Galloway, and it involves child murder and a sea henge, and a druid in a purple cloak who calls himself Cathbad. The Chief Inspector on the case comes from Blackpool (another area I used to know well), there's a charismatic Norwegian archaeologist - and lots of marital infidelity.
I was impressed with Ruth Galloway, who came over as a competent archaologist and an interesting character, the mystery was very well done - and it did take me back to those big Norfolk skies. Elly Griffiths mentions her indebtedness to Francis Pryor's book Seahenge in the acknowledgements, too.
I'll be looking for the next one in her series as well.

Memories of Mary Stewart

I heard today (from reading tor.com) that Mary Stewart has died, aged 97.

Her books were an important part of my reading life as I was growing up. I discovered The Crystal Cave series first, and I can still remember the images that her writing conjured up the first time I read them - Merlin's mother weaving the wrong colour on the loom as she got disturbing news that the young boy didn't understand (but the reader did), a drunken wasp dying on poisoned fruit in the orchard, little details that made the Dark Age world come to life.
Her writing also gave me an important lesson - as Merlin is growing up, he learns to seek knowledge wherever it may be found, rather than sticking to a single religious tradition. When I read that, I was strongly influenced by a childhood of Sunday school attendance and a Church of England junior school to seek religious knowledge in one place only - the Anglican tradition - but Merlin's quest for knowledge encouraged me to open my mind to other traditions. Over the years, I've read about Buddhism and the Sufi tradition and Wicca and Druidry, and all sorts of other things, and found value in all of them somewhere.

Later, I discovered her romantic mysteries, and searched out as many as I could. The Moonspinners introduced me to a magical modern Greece (I was already devouring as many of Mary Renault's books about Ancient Greece as I could get my hands on), and there were books set in France, and even Scotland, in Touch Not the Cat. Again it was the little details that made the stories come alive - in one it was the blue flowers that a dying girl had loved, which proved that she was not the missing girl that the heroine was seeking, who had been colour-blind and unable to see the colour blue. Or it was the nightingale singing near the taverna where the heroine was staying in the Moonspinners, giving her an alibi to be out at night when the villain of the piece finds her there.

What a pity her work wasn't better served on screen! The Disney film of the Moonspinners has little more than the title in common with the book - and the plot makes little sense. I could forgive the switch from the aunt collecting wild flowers to her collecting folk songs for the screen - Greek villagers singing into her tape recorder was far more photogenic than picking a few flowers. But how did the young man who was skin-diving get the money for his trip to Greece and all the equipment if he had been ruined and lost his job because of whatever the bad guys had done in England? And then there was the woman on the yacht, with the leopard....

The BBC were no better, when they serialised The Crystal Cave one Christmas. Some of the scenes were word for word straight from the book, but others.... I have never forgiven them for the scene where Merlin leads everyone to the cave under the castle that keeps falling down (an old Roman mine working, causing subsidence). In the book, he has a genuine vision, of the red and white dragons fighting - and wakes up a couple of days later feeling awful and asking "What did I say?" In the series, it was all a trick, and he only pretended to have a vision.

Flag Fen and Seahenge - Francis Pryor's blog

I've just added a link on the side bar to Francis Pryor's blog. He's an archaeologist who has been involved in Time Team, and before that he was in charge of Flag Fen, a Bronze Age site near Peterborough. Because of the wet conditions, all sorts of things that would never otherwise be preserved have survived here - including many thousands of timbers. It's well worth a visit - I went while I was an archaeologist at Norwich (it was a sort of "school trip" - all the archaeologists on the Norwich dig got a coach for the day!). It has a visitor's centre and reconstructed houses from the Bronze Age and Iron Age.
What I remember most about the day there was the constant grittiness of the wind, as the Fenland's were literally blowing away bit by bit. They were naturally waterlogged, and draining them for farming has had the effect of uncovering fertile soil, but also drying it out to the point where it just blows away, a little bit more each year.
Francis Pryor was also involved in the excavation of Seahenge, which is a quite magnificent Bronze Age site originally positioned on the beach at Old Hunstanton in Norfolk. It had to be moved because it was being washed away, to the dismay of various neo-Pagan groups. Personally, I'm glad that it will be there for me to see when I finally get over to that part of the world again.
Francis Pryor has written books about both these sites, as well as other books which I can recommend as being readable and interesting and based on a lot of research.
Someone else who's written (fiction this time) about archaeology very similar to Seahenge is Elly Griffiths, in her mystery novel The Crossing Places. Her main character is an archaeologist who gets called in by the police. I saw Elly Griffiths a couple of years ago at Hay Festival, sharing a stage with Phil Rickman (who writes mysteries set in Herefordshire) and another lady whose name I forget. I'd forgotten Elly Griffiths too, though I thought at the time that I'd be interested to read her books, until I saw her mentioned again today on Francis Pryor's blog. Archaeologists in fiction tend to have appalling techniques (I'm looking at YOU, Indiana Jones - but it's not only Indy...) and be almost indistinguishable from treasure hunters, but this one seems to be doing it properly.