Lindbergh Kidnapping Suspect No. 1: the One Who Got Away

 

I've read everything I can get my hands on about the Lindbergh kidnapping, it's right up there with the Lizzie Borden case for me. 

I've certainly heard the theory that Charles Lindbergh faked his son's kidnapping and killed him on accident, but that's always what those theories have suggested: it was an accident. Lindbergh was known for playing practical jokes that were usually only amusing to him. He once hid Little Charlie in a closet and let the frantic household search all over for him, growing increasingly panicked, until he admitted what he had done (a laugh a minute, that Colonel Lindbergh). In fact, when his nanny, Betty Gow, went to check on Charlie at 10 p.m. the night of the kidnapping and found the little boy wasn't in his crib, she went down to the study and accused Lindbergh of taking him as a joke. 

Pearlman's theory is much, much darker than a practical joke gone wrong and a hasty fake ransom note to cover up his accidental killing of his son. It seems to fit all the known facts pretty well. Lindbergh was a big believer in eugenics and purity of blood. He made a big deal about finding the right mate to have perfect, healthy children with. So he was probably disappointed that his little namesake, first born son wasn't completely perfect. Charlie had rickets and was on a pretty strong supplement his doctor prescribed to try to correct the issue. He also had a larger than normal, squarish head and might have suffered from hydrocephalus. Of course in the 1930s they didn't have shunts and things like that to drain the buildup in the brain. Nevertheless, there's no evidence that Charlie couldn't have grown into adulthood and lived a long, normal, happy life. Lindbergh was working with a Dr. Carrell, who liked to conduct experiments on living animals, cutting them open and removing organs and seeing how long his subjects would live. Using pumps that Lindbergh helped design, he would see how long he could keep these removed organs viable. So Pearlman's theory is that Lindbergh, seeing himself as a man of science, decided to donate his son to the greater good and faked his kidnapping. He built the ladder, which was never meant to hold anyone (and couldn't--tests showed the rungs would break if more than about 100-125 pounds were placed on it), set it in the mud below his son's nursery window to make the impressions, discarded it in the grass 75 feet from the house, and went inside to stage the kidnapping, which was definitely an inside job. Just looking at the nursery window where the "kidnapper" supposedly entered, there was a big trunk with a suitcase and toys on top of it. You really want us to believe someone from the outside opened the window, climbed into the dark nursery, vaulted over the trunk with everything on it, grabbed the 30 pound nearly two year old, left the note on the window sill, climbed out onto that jenky as hell ladder (that would have broke anyway), closed the window, and made off with the baby? No, of course not. Bruno Richard Hauptmann was completely innocent, and Colonel Lindbergh knew it. 

When Charlie's body was found, his face was completely white, despite supposedly lying in the brush for two months. Most of his organs were missing, but there were no animal bite marks on his bones and no vermin or maggots present. When they turned him over and his face got wet, it turned blue. By the time his body made it to the morgue for the cursory autopsy (Lindbergh wouldn't allow a full one and had the body cremated immediately, Anne didn't get to see him even) he'd turned black. Pearlman theorizes that Dr. Carrell put some sort of preserving chemicals on him so he wouldn't decompose before they could get rid of his body. All in all it was a fascinating, well researched book. It's a shame we won't ever know what really happened to the Lindbergh baby, and that Hauptmann was unfairly executed for a crime he had no part in.  

The Killings at Kingfisher Hill; Shadowplay

 

I really enjoy what Sophie Hannah is doing with Agatha Christie's detective, Hercule Poirot. Poirot has been asked to look into the murder of Frank Devonport by his younger brother, Richard. Richard's fiancée, Helen, has confessed to the crime and is sentenced to hang, but Richard is convinced she is innocent. No matter that Helen was *Frank's* fiancée until the murder (she claims she killed Frank because the day she met Richard, she knew she loved him more and had to get rid of Frank, a story literally no one, even Richard, believes). Inspector Catchpool accompanies Poirot to Kingfisher Hill. The bus ride up there took up a good portion of the book and was quite interesting: a young woman at first refuses to get on the bus, claiming she'll be murdered if she does. Once she's finally persuaded to get on, she wants to change seats, so Poirot switches with her. She refuses to answer any of Catchpool's questions. Meanwhile, Poirot's seatmate, another young woman, confesses to murder and taunts Poirot that he'll never figure out why she did it. 

More twists and turns await the two once they arrive at Kingfisher Hill, along with another murder. The ending was actually a little bit of a let down, but it made perfect sense. Not all murders can be sensational. 

I'm not sure how I feel about "Shadowplay" by Joseph O'Connor. One of my colleagues at work recommended it, so I stuck with it even though I wasn't enjoying it at first. It got better, but I still don't know if I really liked it that much. 

Bram Stoker comes to London, thinking he's going to be an assistant to the actor Henry Irving. Instead Irving expects him to run the Lyceum Theater. Stoker knows absolutely nothing about running a theater and is afraid it won't leave him much time to write, but he takes on the job anyway. And what a job it is. Irving is rude, condescending, basically an all around horrible human being who treats Stoker like garbage and Stoker puts up with it. They actually develop a friendship of sorts. I'm not sure if O'Connor was trying to insinuate that Stoker (or Irving) was Jack the Ripper or if Stoker was gay. He mentioned him going to notorious taverns for men who preferred the company of other men several times, and he and his wife lived apart. Then there was this bit about a spirit named Mina living in the theater. I didn't quite know what to make of it. 

The Moor

 

The fourth Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes book, "The Moor", takes place in a familiar setting: the moor where Sherlock solved the "Hound of the Baskervilles" forty years earlier. Unfortunately it's been ages since I read that (I tend to reread the short stories, but not the longer novellas or full length books. I prefer Doyle's Sherlock in small doses), so there was probably a lot that I missed in this one that would have made more sense if "Hound" was more fresh in my mind. 

Sherlock sends Mary a telegraph and asks her to join him at the home of an old friend of his, the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould, who has spent his life on Dartmoor. The reverend has been seeing phantoms: a coach with a woman, accompanied by...you guessed it...a large dog. Of course in the Doyle story Sherlock proved the hound was no more than a big dog painted to glow in the dark and look spectral. Sherlock and Mary separate to comb for clues. There were some funny bits, Mary really is very witty, and the mystery was interesting. Still not as good as the "Beekeeper's Apprentice", but I like it better than books 2 and 3. 

Masquerade for Murder

 

Okay, a new Mike Hammer book from Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins! It was pretty good. 

Mike and Velda are leaving a restaurant one evening (remember when we could actually eat in restaurants? Good times) when they witness a hit and run. A pretty rare Ferrari nearly kills young Vincent Colby, who is the son of a wealthy investment banker and in the profession himself. Vincent survives but undergoes an alarming personality change as a result of the accident, having fits of violent anger. His father, Vance, hires Mike to look into Vincent's personal life to see who might want to kill him. Turns out young Vincent was not quite the upstanding young man his father thought he was. There were some good, fun classic Hammer moments. 

Drums of Autumn

 

But seriously, I need to read my library books, now that they're coming in.

I reread the fourth Outlander book, "Drums of Autumn" by Diana Gabaldon. Jamie and Claire are in America, homesteading. Back in 1971, Brianna and Roger both find Jamie and Claire's death notice separately. Roger doesn't want to tell Brianna because he's afraid she'll go through the stones to warn them, Brianna doesn't want to tell Roger because she's afraid he'll try to stop her from going through the stones. 

Nothing good ever happens from keeping secrets, folks. That is 100% the moral of this book. So many bad things could have been avoided if everyone had been honest with everyone else. Seriously. 

So Brianna goes through the stones, Roger finds out and follows her. Lots of fun scenes with Brianna at Lollybrach and Brianna meeting Jamie and later Lord John Grey, who is the best (as an aside, I've typed his name so many times in texts that my app automatically fills it in when I type "Lord". So there's that). I do think I'm going to have to put a pause on rereading the rest of the series, though, as I have a bunch of library books I want to get through. 

Voyager; A Letter of Mary

Okay, so I finished rereading "Voyager" by Diana Gabaldon yesterday, the third book in the "Outlander" series. Back in 1968, historian Roger Wakefield is helping Claire and Brianna search for Jamie, and they find him on the rolls of a prison. In 1766 (I've probably got the dates all wrong, since I don't have the book right in front of me. Close enough though) Jamie spent 7 years living in a cave at Lallybroch, and he has one of his tenants turn him in to the English for the reward money, otherwise everyone is going to starve. He goes to prison and meets up with John Grey again, the youth who tried to kill him in the second book because he thought he'd kidnapped Claire. Eventually Claire makes the heartrending choice to leave Brianna and go back through the stones to find Jamie. She does, and after his nephew, Ian, is kidnapped by pirates, they hop onboard a ship and chase after him, ending up in the West Indies. It was a lot of fun. 

I have to admit, while I liked the third Mary Russell book better than the second, I still didn't like it as much as the first. I think she made a mistake having Mary and Sherlock marry so quickly in the series, it would have been a lot more fun if she'd drug that out a little and let the tension crackle. Oh well. It's weird to imagine Sherlock Holmes married.

Sherlock and Mary are visited by an archeologist they briefly met in Palestine several years earlier, Dorothy Ruskin. Dorothy has a letter she wants Mary to have, a letter purportedly written by Mary Magdalene nearly 2,000 years earlier. Dorothy is killed a day later, hit by an automobile. Sherlock and Mary investigate and quickly discover it was not an accident. There were definitely some fun moments, but she set the bar pretty high with the first book.  

Monstrous Regiment of Women

 

I didn't like the second book in the Mary Russell series by Laurie R. King as much as the first. One of my friends at work, who has read the whole series, said that some of them are better than others, so I'm not ready to throw the towel in just yet, I'll give book 3 a chance.

Mary is about to turn 21 and gain her independence from her much hated guardian aunt, as well as her substantial inheritance. She's also about to graduate from Oxford. Very exciting times! A friend of hers, Ronnie, introduces her to the Temple of God, run by a female preacher named Margery (shades of Aimee Semple McPherson). Several wealthy young women have died recently under suspicious circumstances who were associated with the Temple, leaving large bequests to Margery's church. Mary decides to offer herself up as bait to see if the deaths were really accidental or not. I don't want to say too much and spoil the book, but the whole mystery aspect wasn't really interesting, Margery was just a weird character, and Sherlock was acting bizarre. I had a lot of "WTF just happened?!" moments while reading this book. Oh well. Like I said, here's hoping book 3 is better. 

Beekeeper's Apprentice; Dragonfly in Amber

I've had "The Beekeeper's Apprentice" by Laurie R. King on my "to read" list for a long time. I love Sherlock Holmes, and I've enjoyed some other authors besides Doyle who have used the great detective in their fiction. This one was really good. I originally started out listening to it as an audiobook (trying to give my eyes a break) but I spend so little time in the car (or cleaning my house) that I barely got through a third of the book before it was due and I couldn't renew it because it had holds. I was really enjoying the narrator, though, I'm sorry I didn't get to hear her do Sherlock and Mary's voices when they posed as gypsies.

At any rate! Sherlock is in his mid-fifties, retired and living in Sussex, tending bees, when he meets young Mary Russell. Mary has a keen mind and Sherlock finds a kindred spirit. Mary soon becomes his student, and the two of them rescue a kidnapped child of an American senator before things get really sticky.  

I also finished rereading "Dragonfly in Amber" by Diana Gabaldon. I enjoyed it a lot more this time around. I think, having read the books and watched the show, that I'm picking up on more of the subtleties in the books that I missed the first time around because I JUST WANTED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED!! and was too impatient to take my time with them. It's unfortunately a common habit I have with series like this. 
The book starts out in Scotland, 1968. Claire and her daughter, Brianna, meet Reverend Wakefield's adopted son, Roger, who is a historian, and Claire tells Brianna the truth about her real father and how she traveled through time. It doesn't go well, as you can imagine. The bulk of the book is Claire telling what happened after she rescued Jamie from Wentworth Prison: how they traveled to France to try to thwart Bonnie Prince Charlie's doomed invasion, hobnobbing with the rich and influential. Claire starts working in a hospital and meets several truly charming characters. Eventually they have to go back to Scotland to fight with Charles and hope that maybe they can change history by winning at Culloden.