Margaret Yorke is a very popular English mystery writer. The list of her published books is long. I tried reading CRIMINAL DAMAGE, which the jacket calls “a novel of suspense.” I did find some suspense, but only read less than 50 pages. The suspense I felt was whether anything was ever going to happen. She went on and on giving more acquaintance with her characters than I wanted. I would rather have gotten acquainted with them more slowly as a bit of action unfolded.
Some action did unfold in what I read, a lot of shopping, and cooking and inner rumination of what seemed to be the main character and her daughter. Mom was concerned whether daughter would ever marry, and daughter repeatedly suffered over a breakup with the guy she was living with. Not a hint of any mystery in 50 pages. So I gave up and stopped. I’m obsessive enough without reading obsessive books.
Now for HOOK LINE & HOMICIDE by Mark Richard Zubro. Matching the jacket claim of clever dialogue, I’m surprised the title wasn’t HOOK LINE & SINK HER, but the/a murder victim I skipped ahead to was male. I found the clever dialogue not clever but boring. I only managed to read 32 pages before giving up and skipping to 2 or 3 pages of the 327 pages.
Zubro has a number of publications so he does sell. Someone out there likes him. Personally, I would never have published him, which proves I’d make a very poor mystery editor.
Now for something different and positive: Jan Willem van de Wettering, a Dutch mystery writer. I’m suggesting you read his 3 books on Zen. He became a Zen enthusiast, far more so than I have. He went to Japan, stayed in a monastery, and did the whole trip of acting like a monk. He also wrote 3 books about his experiences with Zen and Zennists.
I’m looking at THE EMPTY MIRROR, copyright 1973. The subtitle is Experiences in a Japanese Zen Monastery. Jan was born in 1931, 6 years after I was. But he went thru WW2 in Holland, left there in 1950 seeking “answers to questions no one could answer” according to the book jacket. He searched in South Africa, South America. Australia, Japan and was back in Holland. A world traveler, and I have only been in the US, Mexico, and Canada. Yet we seem very similar, at least in how our viewpoint on Zen changed over the years.
His last book on Zen, AFTER ZEN, shows the same disillusionment with organized Zen I have reached, partially thru reading AFTER ZEN, copyright 1999. But he was still sitting meditation and Zen ideas were still strongly affecting the way he lived, now in America. Again, like me.
A in between book, A GLIMPSE OF NOTHINGNESS, first published in 1975 is subtitled Experiences in an American Zen Community, probably Kapleau’s in New England Jan now lives in New England, and I suspect events at Kapleau’s community which led to Kapleau’s chosen successor leaving Zen and starting her own meditation center, and Kapleau ending, the last I knew in New Mexico had much to do with his writing AFTER ZEN.
Jan is a much better writer than I am, and he also has written mysteries. I’ll give all 3 Zen books at least a 9 ratting, and I may try to find a mystery of his to review that here as well. I love you, Toni, you bought (or stole) all 3.