Tag Archives: books

The Monday Book: THE GATE KEEPER by Charles Todd

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THE GATE KEEPER                                            

by Charles Todd

(Feb. 2018, Harper Collins/Wm Morrow)

320 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0062678713

 

 

 

 

 

            When Stephen Wentworth climbs down from his motorcar to talk to the person standing in the country road that leads to the village of Wolf Pit, he has no idea that he is not going to see Christmas 1920.  Nor does his companion, Miss McRae, expect to see him shot through the heart at close range.  Scotland Yard Detective Ian Rutledge, whose sister Frances has just been married, takes leave from Scotland Yard to sort his feelings. Restless, he decides to take a drive (longer than he expects) and discovers he is on his way to Ipswich.  He shrugs it off and continues until he has to put on the brakes to avoid the car in the road and the woman with bloodied hands standing over a man’s lifeless body.  The deceased is a well-liked bookstore owner, and Rutledge tells the Yard he’s on the case.

And what a case it is!  Rutledge finds there is nothing routine about the murder, and no real suspect emerges as he digs into the Wentworth family’s cold treatment of the victim. The villagers and monied residents alike have no dark tales to tell, and when a second murder victim is discovered, the sinister mystery intensifies.  Rutledge has to piece the puzzle together by investigating people who appear to be strangers or mere acquaintances.  A third murder in Sussex gets his attention, and even though Stevenson is on that case, he tracks down a man who started the catastrophic events in Wolf Pit.  The problem is, he’s been murdered as well.  Even so, Rutledge has enough to go on, so when he returns to Wolf Pit, he works his detection to a solution that stuns the reader to no end.

It is fortunate Rutledge was driving to Ipswich that night.  The murder victims would have been buried after inquests that stated the murderer was unknown.  This novel has the reader speculating from the start, and as usual with any Todd novel, the reader is taken aback by all the interwoven plot elements that are tied together in the end.  concerned will never be the same.  Certainly not Ian Rutledge’s life as he confronts another difficult case.

 

 

About the Reviewer:

Liz Phillips is a middle school educator and writer living in Southwest Virginia, a forgotten place in the Appalachian Mountains. Contact her at lizphillips.author@gmail.com.

 

The Monday Book: Life without Parole – by Victor Hassine

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Jack’s guest post is actually the Monday book so could be on time or not –

life without parole

I have been a regular monthly visitor to our local Federal Penitentiary for nearly five years. Each time I visit with two inmates for around an hour with each and we talk about all sorts of things.

But the hardest thing is to get any idea of their everyday lives before and after the visit!

I got some idea from ‘Orange is the New Black’ by Piper Kerman, but that was from a woman’s perspective. However Wendy gave me Hassine’s book and that really opened my eyes. His experiences were in a state prison but I’m sure they would have been much the same in ‘the pen’.

‘Life Without Parole’ is a series of essays or interviews by an inmate sentenced to life in 1981 who was an educated and thoughtful man. He documents his experiences over time, his conversations with fellow prisoners and his observations on the culture of prison life.

Hassine makes no attempt to excuse his crime or to suggest he doesn’t deserve his punishment. He simply relates his life behind bars.

This book spares nothing and describes a desperate and harrowing world that I have had the tiniest glimpse of. Hassine doesn’t try to excuse either himself or any of his prison community, yet draws us in and shows us a parallel world that ‘there but for the Grace of God’ any one of us could only too easily be part of!

His analysis of the various problems with the prison system is scholarly and erudite and makes for gripping reading. Each chapter features an introduction written by eminent criminologist Robert Johnson, and the book is divided into three sections: Prison Life, which introduces readers to the day-to-day aspects of Hassine’s life in prison; Interviews, which presents a series of candid interviews with Hassine’s fellow inmates; and Op Ed, in which Hassine addresses some of the most significant problems within the current prison system.

The author was an Egyptian born immigrant to the US and a law school graduate. He died in prison in 2008 under unclear circumstances although it seems likely he took his own life following an unsuccessful appeal.

I can thoroughly recommend this book, which is now in its fifth edition, to anyone interested in prison life.