Review: "Missing," E. A. Jackson

It’s a hot summer in London in 1990 when Baby Bella goes missing. Detective Inspector Martha Allen has misgivings about taking the case. She’s never handled anything like it. Allen could reveal she’s pregnant as an excuse; then again, she’s ambitious. So she strides headfirst into a case that will ultimately haunt her for nearly 30 years.

Thomas and Vivien Carpenter have come to the city for a getaway from their home in Wells, in the southwest of England. They’re staying at the Bellevue Hotel in Pimlico. Their daughter, Bella, slumbered in a Moses basket by an open window, while her parents slept in bed. Thomas awoke in the early hours of the day to find the baby gone.

Officers are called in from across the city; this is a big case. Allen enlists the help of Detective Constable Manley Desbury. She doesn’t know him, but they develop a solid working relationship.

Promising leads are followed but turn out to be dead ends. A scrap of fabric, a smear of blood are all the detectives have as clues. No one has seen anything. Allen is desperate. She wants to find the baby, of course, but she also envisions her career going down the tubes if the case is not solved.

Then, a beautiful young woman shows up with Baby Bella. Nell Beatty says she found the tot on a park bench. Allen starts to question her, but she disappears. She’d given the police false information, and they are unable to find her again.

Allen wants to keep the case open; she doesn’t think the whole story has been told. But when even Desbury lets her know he thinks she’s pushing too hard, she backs off.

Then, in 2020, just before the pandemic causes shutdowns and a massive disruption to everyday life, DI Desbury calls Allen, now in admin at Scotland Yard. A body has been found on his turf in Bristol. It’s Nell Beatty.

Allen can’t help herself. The wound of what to her was an unfinished case is reopened. She has to find out what really happened to Baby Bella.

Desbury is willing to help her, to a degree. He also needs to find Nell Beatty’s murderer. The trail is thin, and Allen has to remind herself “this is why they call us the plod.” Eventually, Allen does learn enough to close the case in her own mind, and to move on with her life.

For the reader, though, there’s one final twist.

This was a deeply satisfying, page-turning read, as much about the cost of not solving a crime as it is about solving it.

I knew from the first page I was going to enjoy it. Allen is a likable, relatable character and her tenacity is admirable. The suspense is intense; kernels of of the truth emerge, but it is truly not until the final page that all is revealed.

I enjoy police procedurals in general, but Missing is something more. The detective work is there, but this is also Allen’s story. And, of course, Baby Bella’s.

From Here: Observing the Natural World

Lunch Is Coming

Sandy Point Beach in Stockton Springs, Maine, is a quiet spot along the Penobscot River, near where it flows into Penobscot Bay. 

Ruined pilings range out from the beach at one point. They may be from a wharf used by the steamship that used to dock in the area, or may be the remains of a fertilizer factory. The details are sketchy. No one seems to know what they are, or were.

The pilings are scenic, in their way; they look haunting on a cloudy day, or in a fine mist.

But the sun was shining brightly on the late April day when Paul and I stood gazing at them. It was our 40th wedding anniversary. We were enjoying a walk along the shore before a celebratory lunch.

My eyes landed on a platform on one of the pilings. “Is that an osprey’s nest?” I said.

As if in answer, a majestic bird suddenly rose out of the box. It flew directly over us, slowly. Was it glaring at us? Then it headed off into the woods beyond.

The reason for the warning soon became apparent. Chirps and plaintive cries arose from the nest. Chicks! We stood and listened, smiling. We couldn’t see the babies, but they were clearly hungry. And then, a second adult flew out of the nest, this time toward deeper water.

“Lunch is coming,” I wanted to call out to the young ones.

We waited a bit but the adults did not return. Oh, how I wanted them to. I wanted to be sure the babies ate. I hated to turn away to continue our walk. I felt like I was deserting them.

I took one long look before I left. But as I walked, watching the waves gently lap the shore, I calmed down. Nature takes its course. Ospreys will do what they have always done. They know their chicks are hungry and they have gone off to find food for them.

I found peace in that thought, as a soft breeze rippled through the nearby salt marsh, as the sun rose higher in the sky.

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 I welcome email at lizzie621@icloud.com

Review: "The Secret Lives of Murderers' Wives," Elizabeth Arnott

No one else wants to be friends with Beverley, Elsie and Margot. Their husbands were serial killers.

They first turn to each other for support, but when one young woman, and then another, and another, are murdered, they decide they have to do something.

Because who better knows the mind of a man who kills?

It’s 1966, and Los Angeles is simmering in a heat wave. Beautiful Beverley is able to keep up her middle-class lifestyle on the earnings she made as a teen model. But she is fearful, anxious and worries constantly about her two children. Her relationship with a police officer who was involved in her husband’s case only takes the edge off a little.

Beverley feels guilty, though she was not involved in her husband’s crime. Finding the killer of the young women, who is now at large, would help her find peace of mind as well as see justice served. 

Elsie is paving a new life for herself. She’s raised herself out of the typing pool at the L.A. Signal newspaper. But her new job as administrative assistant to the editor doesn’t get her the writing assignments she wants. When a new female crime reporter joins the staff, however, Elsie enlists her help. She wants to solve the crimes to prove her worth. And get a byline.

Glamorous Margot was married to a politician and lived the high life. She still has connections, and still looks the part in her designer wardrobe, but lives in a rundown apartment and works in a department store. Margot wants to pretend nothing is wrong, but she is searching for meaning in her life.

Told through their alternating perspectives, the women follow leads and clues, moving from lavish parties to trailer parks. The killer does bizarre things with the victims' bodies—one is strung from a porch. Another has an arrow put through her eye. What could it possibly mean? 

Beverley swallows her pride and buries her trepidations, to visit her husband in prison. She  has tried to remember what a good father he was, to separate that man from the murderer he became. But she faces him as the beast he is in an effort to gain more insight. Though she was married to a murderer, it turns out there’s more for her to learn

The women go down several wrong alleys and, naturally, antagonize the police. They almost break up because the tension is so great. But they stick it out, and stay together. They become fearless and a bit reckless. The resolution is horrifying, but it gives them a way to move forward with their lives—in more ways than one.

From Here: Observing the Natural World

 Earth Day

Today is Earth Day. For years I have told myself that I participated in the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. I joined an organized group of classmates and picked up trash in my Massachusetts hometown. I have always been proud of my participation, but as I sat down to write about it, I wondered how valid my memory was.

First I realized that I was 13 in 1970.  A school-sponsored outing to mark Earth Day did not seem like the kind of thing that would have happened in my junior high school. It seems more likely that the outing occurred when I was a freshman in high school, in 1971.

Then there’s the problem of April vacation. In Massachusetts and Maine, spring break occurs at the time of Patriots’ Day. That occurs on April 19th, but since 1969, it has been celebrated on the closest Monday. Earth Day always falls during spring break in Massachusetts and Maine. I know this as I was a school librarian who yearned to celebrate Earth Day with my students for 32 years.

Then there’s this. I heard on the radio show “Living on Earth” that Earth Day was not envisioned as the yearly celebration it has become. This lends credibility to my notion that I participated in that first event, although it probably wasn’t on the actual day. Maybe the Saturday before?

Hmphh.

Well, that trash-collecting outing, whenever it was, has stuck with me all these years. And I know it was related to Earth Day. My group was dispatched to a bleak area underneath the Braga Bridge, a soaring span that connects the city of Fall River and the town of Somerset, where my family lived. The bridge crosses the Taunton River near where it connects with Mount Hope Bay.

I remember thinking at the time that I had no idea that Somerset bordered the bay. Of course I knew the bay—it extended along the west side of Fall River and the adjoining town of Tiverton, R.I., where my mother had grown up and some of her family still lived.

But this area was dominated by the coal-burning Brayton Point Power Plant. I had no reason to be down there in normal circumstances.

So I learned something new about my town that day. And that maybe I needed to be a bit more aware of my surroundings. I was proud, too, to be part of the effort, to be doing my part. I was appalled by the ugliness of the trash that had collected along the beautiful bay, and the specter of the power plant so close by.

The day helped me become an environmentally aware person as I grew into adulthood. There were other factors. My mother’s father had grown a big garden on an in-town lot in Tiverton, a couple of blocks from the bay. He was an inspiration to me. I have a photo of him, in his Boston cap and overalls, holding a basket of strawberries, on display. My father started growing vegetables in our backyard in the early ‘70s. and taught me what he knew. 

I’ve been a gardener ever since, and have tried to be a good steward of the earth. I am not perfect by a very long stretch. But I have done my best to provide food, water and shelter for the critters who frequent my city yard; to plant for pollinators; and to reduce, reuse and recycle. Paul and I chose to live in a community that was close to our jobs, services and amenities, which kept our need to drive to a minimum.

What a wonderful surprise it was to learn, as I did my research for this piece, that the wider area where my group worked is now the Brayton Point Wildlife Management Area. I would love to see it some day. The plant closed in 2017 and a wind power facility is being developed on the site.

Progress!

I will continue to relish that mental image I have of my teenage self, picking up trash. I may not have all the details straight, but the inspiration endures. Cherish the earth.

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 I welcome email at lizzie621@icloud.com