Walter Satterthwait (1946–2020)

I read this book nearly 20 years ago — so long ago that I read it on cassette tapes from my public library! I loved it then, but I had forgotten nearly all of the details, including who the murderer was.

It would be too easy to spoil this book, so I won’t go into the backstory at all. (You can read the book blurb.) But I loved this novel all over again: the humor, the knowledge of human nature and failings, the re-creation of a patrician world that was already disappearing in 1922, the show more depiction of two amazing, courageous, clever heroines, Lizzie Border and Amanda Burton. But more amazing is the lyrical prose that readers don’t expect from mystery novels. I wish I could give this book six stars on this second reading! show less

A few years back, I stumbled across a mystery, Miss Lizzie, in which Satterthwait made Lizzie Borden one half of a detective duo. I loved the story, and I loved Satterthwait's poetic writing style. I went looking for more written by him and came across his first Joshua Croft mystery, Wall of Glass. Since the series is set in Santa Fe and I'd fallen in love with the place after a visit, I read it and knew I'd be back for more. I really enjoy Satterthwait's descriptions of the New Mexican show more landscape, how he develops his characters, and his stories.

Croft works for (and loves) wheelchair-bound Rita Mondragon, an intelligent, beautiful, and stubborn woman who states, "I'll leave this house when I can walk out of it." Croft feels she's making a mistake, but he's willing to accept Rita on her own terms.

The mystery in At Ease With the Dead (the title taken from a quote by Geronimo) is filled with danger, archaeology, oil prospecting, and humor. It's a "buddy movie" in which Croft often finds himself paired with the elderly Navajo, Daniel Begay. The old man has so many tricks up his sleeve that one day Croft looks at him and asks, "Are you really Batman?" This pairing provides much-needed levity in what could have been a very dark story.

Croft has a smart-alecky wit that I really appreciate. Satterthwait has developed a strong cast of characters, and he certainly knows how to construct a mystery that keeps readers guessing as well as bringing his setting to life. He also has the knack of including sentences that can make you stop and think. "Guilt is sometimes a secret sort of self-esteem" or "If you see the world as an organism, a single entity, which of course it is, then you can't help but see the human race as a kind of virus on its surface, actively engaged in killing off the host."

Story, setting, language, characters, Satterthwait's Joshua Croft is an often thought-provoking mystery series that I will certainly be returning to. show less

Poor Lizzie Borden. Guilty or not, she went through at least a couple of flavors of hell in her life, and now she's fair game for any novelist who wants an added soupcon of a certain kind of badassery in their plot.

That being said, I quite enjoyed this. I'm not sure I loved it enough to go hunt down the first book or keep watch for the next one, but I did like it.

Amanda Burton is a teenaged girl who is sent off to spend the summer with her uncle in New York. He lives at the Dakota, and if show more you don't think "John Lennon" every time you read that, I have nothing else for you. And this opens the door for some nice snippets about New York in the 20's, like the origin for the term to "eighty-six" something and … well, Dorothy Parker. I'm always leery of real people being drafted into people's fiction, but that's mostly because it's so often done badly. This wasn't done badly.

“Robert. My chauffeur. … He packs a rod.”
“I’ll bet he does,” said Mrs. Parker. Mr. Lipkind turned to her. Innocently, she said, “I mean, you’d expect him to carry a gun, wouldn’t you?”

One more quote: "'Brave?' Mrs. Parker laughed, sounding somewhat frayed. 'My sphincter was plucking buttons off the car seat.'" Heh.

There's another little cameo which was kind of sweet (as in sweeeeeet, not awwww) Mae West, in case I forget: "Her small, voluptuous body was tightly sheathed in a glistening black silk gown that left her arms and her pale round shoulders bare. It also left bare a large percentage of her chest, which itself took up a large percentage of her body.".

So the upshot is that Amanda and her young, handsome, and wealthy uncle basically paint the town red for a few days … until she finds him murdered in his library. I have to say, this was actually hard to read, because I liked him. There was a little uneasiness about him taking a girl of her age to night clubs and speakeasies, and about her being allowed into said, and also about her wandering New York alone – but taking it at face value (nice young guy treating a niece he likes spending time with to a nice long good time, and New York City was probably in many ways safer for a girl to wander about in?), and the fact that Amanda and the reader meet Uncle John at the same time, means that she and the reader are gutted to much the same extent when he is brutally murdered.

And then Miss Lizzie ("Lizbeth, not Elizabeth") Borden comes swooping in to help, and the two of them – with the help of Miss Lizzie's lawyer and Mrs. Parker – get to work investigating the murder, because the corrupt (seriously nasty) police have decided to hang it on Amanda.

Some of the feats this team performs are a little improbable – but it works, because Miss Lizzie is, shall we say, badass. And Amanda isn't … normal. Perhaps because she's gone through a number of tragedies already in her young life, or perhaps because of some chemical or hormonal lack in her, she is cool, logical, and much, much smarter than your average bear. They make a formidable team.

Maybe I will go look out that first book, after all.

The usual disclaimer: I received this book via Netgalley for review. show less

First Line: The days were longer then, in that long-ago summer at the shore, and the air was softer, and the sunlight more golden as it winked and wobbled off a bluer sea.

It is 1921 and Prohibition has just begun. Thirteen-year-old Amanda Burton is staying with her father, stepmother and older brother in a house along the Massachusetts coast.

Amanda finds out their next-door neighbor is the notorious Lizzie Borden, the woman who was acquitted of taking a hatchet and cutting her father and show more stepmother to pieces. Amanda meets Lizzie, and they become friends-- meeting almost every day so Lizzie can teach the young girl card tricks.

Amanda and her brother loathe their stepmother, and when Amanda wakes up on the hottest day of the summer to find the woman hacked to bits in a bedroom in their house, suspicion falls squarely on the shoulders of neighbor Lizzie. Amanda doesn't believe that Lizzie did it (she doesn't believe Lizzie killed her parents either), and with Miss Lizzie taking the initiative to hire both a lawyer and a Pinkerton detective, the unlikely pair sets out to find the real killer. Their investigation uncovers a nest of secrets. All they have to do is find the guardian who's willing to kill to keep his--or her-- secrets hidden.

Satterthwait's writing style captured me from the first paragraph, and another scene set in the fog actually had the hair standing on the back of my neck. The story is told by a much older Amanda who seems very nostalgic for the innocence she had during those days. As the story progresses and suspicion shifts from one person to another, the reader can easily begin to doubt all the characters-- even Amanda herself.

Satterthwait's poetic style brings the era to life in a swiftly moving plot that shifts nimbly through the fog of secrets and suspicions until the reader is deliciously lost. Amanda and Miss Lizzie are now one of my favorite detective duos, and I have more of the author's books on their way to my doorstep. show less