Blog - www.richardjespers.com

QUEENS OF SOLVING CRIME

3/21/2025

A WRITER'S WIT
There are certainly times when my own everyday life seems to retreat so the life of the story can take me over. That is why a writer often needs space and time, so that he or she can abandon ordinary life and “live” with the characters.
Margaret Mahy
Author of A Lion in the Meadow
Born March 21, 1936

M. Mahy

MY BOOK WORLD

Benedict, Marie. The Queens of Crime: A Novel. New York: St. Martin’s, 2025.

I sometimes think that wish fulfillment may be a driving force in writing fiction. The writer is able to bring to life a scenario by way of fiction that was impossible for its time in real life. Perhaps that is the case for Ms. Benedict, who takes five of the most celebrated female mystery writers of the 1930s and places them as characters in the same novel setting of London: Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham, and Baroness Emma Orczy.

The women essentially crash the local Detection Club, which is male dominated in every way. The women plan to solve a local murder not only to show the men in the club that they can but also the local police who otherwise treat them with disdain. The case they tackle involves a young English nurse who makes what is to be a short excursion to France (the ferry provides a day trip). She never returns alive, as her body is discovered in a wooded area. The five queens of crime set about working together to solve the murder. Though they have their squabbles, they see that cooperation is quite useful.

I don’t usually read mysteries, but my curiosity, for some reason, was piqued by this one. I’m not sorry I read it. It’s a page-turner, all right, but an intelligent one! Perhaps I shall read more of the genre.

Up Next:
TUES APR 1: A Writer's Wit | Jesmyn Ward
WEDS APR 2: A Writer's Wit | Hans Christian Andersen
THURS APR 3: A Writer's Wit | Jane Goodall
FRI APR 4: My Book World | Brandon Taylor, Real Life: A Novel

A WRITER'S WIT: LOIS LOWRY

3/20/2025

Submitting to censorship is to enter the seductive world of The Giver: the world where there are no bad words and no bad deeds. But it is also the world where choice has been taken away and reality distorted. And that is the most dangerous world of all.
Lois Lowry
Author of The Giver
Born March 20, 1937

L. Lowry

Up Next:
FRI: My Book World | Marie Benedict, The Queens of Crime: A Novel
NO POSTS MARCH 25-28 | Will return on
TUES APR 1: A Writer's Wit | Jesmyn Ward
WEDS APR 2: A Writer's Wit | Hans Christian Andersen
THURS APR 3: A Writer's Wit | Jane Goodall

A WRITER'S WIT: GARTH GREENWELL

3/19/2025

I guess I think that sex and desire and humiliation are central to my experience of consciousness—to my experience of humanness—and I wanted to explore the ways that they circle around and approach and fail to add up to love, or the ways that those three terms—sex, desire, love—can in some lights seem synonymous and in others like elements entirely alien to one another.
Garth Greenwell
Author of Cleanness
Born March 19, 1978

G. Greenwell

Up Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Lois Lowry
FRI: My Book World | Marie Benedict, The Queens of Crime: A Novel

A WRITER'S WIT: WILFRED OWEN

3/18/2025

Be bullied, be outraged, be killed, but do not kill.
Wilfred Owen, Poet
Author of "Arms of the Boy"
Born March 18, 1893

W. Owen

Up Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Garth Greenwell
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Lois Lowry
FRI: My Book World | Marie Benedict, The Queens of Crime: A Novel

'PREP': SMARTASSES ON STEROIDS

3/14/2025

A WRITER'S WIT
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Albert Einstein
Author of The Evolution of Physics
Born March 14, 1879

A. Einstein

MY BOOK WORLD

Sittenfeld, Curtis. Prep: A Novel. New York: Random, 2005.

I’m not sure why, but I’m drawn to so-called campus novels—perhaps it is something against which I can hold up my own experiences of adolescence. This one takes place at a prep school, Ault, in Massachusetts. Prep, at least this school, is a cross between an all AP-class high school and a small college occupied by smartasses.

Sittenfeld, given that she is about thirty as she publishes this novel, is perhaps the proper age to recreate such a world, about a half a life ago. The memory is still sharp concerning details she uses: aromas of freshly pubescent boys and girls, smells of institutional food, smells arising amidst the chalk dust and musty books and papers of a long-established institution. She recreates the emotions of that age, yet instead of going home to your parents each night, you’re returning to a dorm to eke out a life with someone you either hate or someone you adore (maybe the sophomore year onward).

Lee Fiora, a fourteen-year-old frosh, is bright enough to be on scholarship, and yet she feels insecure much of the time. At her middle school in South Bend, Indiana, she was a genius, but at Ault she is just one among many—many who seem to be far more ambitious than she is, as well. They seem not to have holes in their education as she does in the field of math. Not only that, but most of the students hail from rich families from the Northeast, and even though some of them befriend her, she never feels quite at home with such people.

One might be jealous of Sittenfeld for writing such an engaging, successful novel the first time around if it weren’t such an enjoyable piece of literature to read. It isn’t just about a bunch of teenagers but it is about those teenagers’ education: academic, personal, literary, social, and cultural. In this novel, they seem to learn it all—in four short and quick years.

Up Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Wilfred Owen
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Garth Greenwell
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Lois Lowry
FRI: My Book World | Marie Benedict, The Queens of Crime: A Novel

A WRITER'S WIT: MARGARET CRAVEN

3/13/2025

The Indian knows his village and feels for his village as no white man for his country, his town, or even for his own bit of land. His village is not the strip of land four miles long and three miles wide that is his as long as the sun rises and the moon sets. The myths are the village, and the winds and rains. The river is the village, and . . . the talking bird, the owl, who calls the name of the man who is going to die.
Margaret Craven
Author of I Heard the Owl Call My Name
Born March 13, 1901

M. Craven

Up Next:
FRI: My Book World | Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep: A Novel
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Wilfred Owen
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Garth Greenwell
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Lois Lowry

A WRITER'S WIT: DAVE EGGERS

3/12/2025

Because I grew up with this naive expectation of people doing right, I get shocked by every little violation.
Dave Eggers
Author of The Eyes and the Impossible
Born March 12, 1970

D. Eggers

Up Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Margaret Craven
FRI: My Book World | Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep: A Novel

A WRITER'S WIT: DEBORAH COPAKEN KOGAN

3/11/2025

Photography forces one out into the world, interacting with people and the environment. It flexes all those right brain, spatially-adept muscles.
Deborah Copaken Kogan
Author of Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War
Born March 11, 1966

D. Copaken Kogan

Up Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Dave Eggers
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Margaret Craven
FRI: My Book World | Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep: A Novel

SPYING, SERIOUS BUSINESS

3/7/2025

A WRITER'S WIT
I am the daughter of Black writers who are descended from Freedom Fighters who broke their chains and changed the world. They call me.
Amanda Gorman, Poet
Author of Call Us What We Carry
Born March 7, 1998

A. Gorman

MY BOOK WORLD

Haseltine, Eric. The Spy in Moscow Station: A Counterspy’s Hunt for a Deadly Cold War Threat. With a foreword by General Michael V. Hayden. New York: St. Martin’s, 2019.

I’ve never seen so many abbreviations for governmental organizations in one book, the easiest to remember of which may be NATO or NSA. Memorize these and more—OPS2, DARPA, IARPA, NSAAB, DS&T, SIGINT, TOPS, RSO, HUMINT—and the book is a joy to read. Seriously, the story, once the author gets to the heart of it, is quite titillating—especially if you’re into reading spy craft literature.

In the late 1970s, Charles Gandy is an NSA operative sent to Moscow to investigate the US embassy there. He discovers a “chimney” in the embassy building which is adjacent to a Russian government structure, which is not a chimney at all but a tall empty chamber aiming what looks like an antenna directly at the ambassador’s apartment in the embassy. For six years, Gandy fights others in his own organization, not to mention the CIA and the State department, to bring what seems may be a breach to the attention of muckety-mucks in the US government. Many interesting pages unravel that story, the gist of which is: A certain underling working for Gandy uncovers in about half of the thirty IBM Selectric typewriters a bar in which is embedded a transmitter that “reads” each typewriter key and thus translates important memos for the Russians. Since most everything is typed before being sent officially, this is a boon to the Russians.

For some reason, during that period CIA and State leadership underestimated Russian intelligence, mainly because they didn’t think Russia had the money to conduct this kind of research and experimentation. The US looked at the primitive products (including automobiles) that Russian produced and extrapolated the wrong conclusion. The thesis of this book may be that this was a strategic mistake for which our country is still paying quite a price (i.e. Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election which most probably helped to elect Trump). Enough said. And as far as we know, our government is still underestimating the damage the Russians continue to do to our well-being each day.

Up Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Deborah Copaken Kogan
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Dave Eggers
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Margaret Craven
FRI: My Book World | Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep: A Novel

A WRITER'S WIT: ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

3/6/2025

How many desolate creatures on the earth have learnt the simple dues of fellowship and social comfort, in a hospital.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Poet
Author of An Essay on Mind, with Other Poems
Born March 6, 1806

E. Barrett Browning

Up Next:
FRI: My Book World | Eric Haseltine, The Spy in Moscow Station: A Counterspy's Hunt for a Deadly Cold War Threat
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Deborah Copaken Kogan
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Dave Eggers
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Albert Einstein

A WRITER'S WIT: ROSA LUXEMBURG

3/5/2025

Freedom is always freedom for the one who thinks differently.
Rosa Luxemburg
Author of The Accumulation of Capital
Born March 5, 1871

R. Luxemburg

Up Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Elizabeth Barrett Browning
FRI: My Book World | Eric Haseltine, The Spy in Moscow Station: A Counterspy's Hunt for a Deadly Cold War Threat

A WRITER'S WIT: JAMES ELLROY

3/4/2025

The truth of the matter is, you lose a parent to murder when you’re ten years old, and in fact at the time of the murder you hate your lost parent, my mother in my case.
James Ellroy
Author of The Black Dahlia
Born March 4, 1948

J. Ellroy

Up Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Rosa Luxemburg
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Elizabeth Barrett Browning
FRI: My Book World | Eric Haseltine, The Spy in Moscow Station: A Counterspy's Hunt for a Deadly Cold War Threat