A Bad Day for Sorry: a crime novel by Sophie Littlefield

A Bad Day for Sorry by Sophie Littlefield Find this book in our catalog

Stella Hardesty lives in rural Missouri, has issues with her chunky, fifty-something figure and an unusual attitude to life. Having married young, and given birth to a delightful daughter, she spent years pretending that her husband did not verbally abuse her in public and regularly physically abuse her at home, blacking her eyes and bruising her ribs but never actually sending her to the emergency room. Then, just shy of her fiftieth birthday, she surprised herself by dispatching her abuser with a wrench.

The community turned a blind eye, and now Stella has a fearsome reputation, not only as an unrepentant murderess but as an inexorable avenger of abused women throughout Missouri - even as far as Branson. Stella runs a side business helping battered women who come to her and pay her what they can. She barely has time to run the sewing machine repair and quilting notions shop she inherited from her deceased husband. She works outside the law persuading errant husbands and boyfriends to change their behaviour with a little old-fashioned intimidation and torture. When Chrissy Shaw asks Stella for help, it seems like a straightforward case: Chrissy's husband, Roy Dean disappears with her two-year-old son and Stella is asked to find and recover the boy.

However, Stella is soon confirmed in her suspicions that things are not as straightforward as they seem. Roy Dean has already had to be corrected once for abusing the ditsy and passive Chrissy, and once again for his overbearing treatment of his new girlfriend, with whom he was seen at the drag strip. It looks like he is a thoroughly despicable shred of humanity and may well have kidnapped Chrissy's child for reasons more dire than simply gaining custody in a marital split. Will Stella be able to prevail against the Kansas City mobsters with whom Roy Dean is involved in some way? And will Chrissy be able to pull herself together enough to help her?

This book seemed to me to be a good one to recommend to fans of Janet Evanovich, particularly if they enjoy her dark humor. For both authors evil is just as banal and yet rears its head everywhere. Their characters are captivating, complex and very flawed and are struggling to make a living in some of the seemier parts of city or country. The humor comes from the characters and their distressingly human frailties. To me, the Janet Evanovich novels have become more violent over the years. A Bad Day for Sorry is also violent. The characters also don't seem to have any compunction in using bad language, often as a form of aggression. Still, we admire Stephanie Plum as we admire Stella: each is vulnerable in some way and yet each faces challenges that no one should be forced to face.

If you like the rural backwater setting of A Bad Day for Sorry, you might like the Maggody mystery series by Joan Hess featuring female Arkansas sheriff, Arly Hanks. This series has a conflicted but ultimately strong female lead, downhome, sometimes comic characters and darkish humor.

If you like the revenge element, partnered again with definitely dark humor, you might like the Dexter series by Jeff Lindsay, now made into a TV series.

Cozy Mysteries Make Great Beach Reads

The independent publisher, Midnight Ink has developed somewhat of a reputation for the high number of cozy mystery writers it features in its catalog. Diehard cozy fans might enjoy visiting the Inkspot blog, where several Midnight Ink authors regularly post about writing, their books, and topics of general interest to book lovers.

The hallmark of a cozy is that it's fun. From the novels of Agatha Christie to Murder, She Wrote, cozy mysteries have won over generations of readers with their amateur sleuths, humor, and enjoyable plots. A cozy is a light mystery without significant blood or gore. A body is found but we don't witness the actual murder. The sleuth is often an amateur caught up by circumstances into solving the crime. The important thing is that at the end justice should be seen to be done and balance is returned to the world. Readers often take pleasure in the puzzle to be solved and the intriguing or eccentric characters and setting.

Despite their name, cozy mysteries do not need to be read in front of a roaring fire, but also make great beach reads.

Here are some recent cozies in Harford County Public Library for you this summer:
Handbags and homicide / Dorothy Howell
The anteater of death : a Gunn Zoo mystery / Betty Webb
Paper, scissors, death : a Kiki Lowenstein scrap-n-craft mystery / Joanna Campbell Slan
Murder walks the plank : a death on demand mystery / Carolyn Hart

The Savage Garden by Mark Mills

It's been a week since I finished this book. Having finished the last page last week, I put down The Savage Garden with a great feeling of satisfaction. I'm sure most readers will too, especially those who liked The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. I took up The Savage Garden having read the reviews and hoping to feel again the somewhat unhealthy thrill of an over-charged and fevered, but totally absorbing mystery rooted in a past of culture and privilege. Both books feature a mysterious garden, both feature an ancient and decayed family, and both feature a young scholar and stranger who goes to a remote locale to carry out a task to ensure the posterity of an elderly grand dame. In the case of The Savage Garden the locale is Tuscany in the present day. Publisher's Weekly of 3/5/07 summed up the plot very neatly:

"Two murders committed 400 years apart form the core of British author Mills's outstanding second novel (afterAmagansett , which won a CWA Dagger Award). In 1958, Cambridge undergraduate Adam Strickland, who's studying a curious Tuscan Renaissance garden for his art history thesis, is equally intrigued by both the garden of the Villa Docci estate and its elderly owner, Signora Francesca Docci. Built by the villa's first owner, Federico Docci, in 1577, the garden was intended as a memorial to his wife, Flora, who died when she was only 25. In the course of his research, Adam begins to sense that events, both past and present, are not as clear-cut as they appear. In particular, he discovers that there are several versions of the death of Signora Docci's oldest son, Emilio, who was shot by the villa's German occupiers at the end of WWII. Adam is hailed by all when he comes up with a novel theory explaining Flora's death in 1548, but when he begins to speculate on Emilio's demise, he finds himself in serious danger."

I enjoyed the descriptions of the Tuscan countryside, which I thought was very convincingly brought to life. The garden also is described in such detail that one really begins to feel the atmosphere of the place which so effects the main character. As in The Thirteenth Tale, there are a lot of unresolved issues from the past, people with long memories and secret and puzzling motivations. The book is not billed as a gothic tale, but in my opinion it really is. It is also somewhat of a coming of age story: the undergraduate, Adam is a sexually athletic but crass 22-year-old who grows up during his stay in Tuscany. The mistaken assumptions Adam makes about other characters sometimes seem unbelievable, and not all of his gaffes are necessary to the plot. For me this was the only false note in the book.