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The Albert Mysteries #1
Requiem for Ashes (Volume 1) by David A. Crossman
In Albert, D. A. Crossman introduces a character who may well be the most lovable eccentric in all of modern detective fiction. He's also a surprisingly good, if unorthodox, sleuth. Nothing made sense to Albert. Why would anyone want to kill Professor Glenly because of Etruscans? Why did everyone think Tewksbury had done it? And why did the cassette recorder stop working when you spilled beer on it? Questions that bothered other people didn't generally concern Albert. He didn't think like that. He never understood how people could spout their age or weight or social security number off the top to their heads without looking it up somewhere. He existed for his music. The orbit of his tiny, coffee-stained universe was elliptical and only rarely brushed the conventional world, generally in the vicinity of a Dunkin' Donuts. Nevertheless, he couldn't understand why the police failed to grasp the logic of his Tewksbury had just quit smoking. You don't quit smoking if you're planning to kill someone. Even a history professor. In Murder in a Minor Key, Albert is dislodged from his musical cocoon when Tewksbury, despairing of being convicted, attempts suicide in prison. But how does one go about proving someone's innocence? First, you get the accused out of harm's way before something terrible happens. That seemed logical. So Albert kidnapped Tewksbury from the hospital. Oddly enough, this created a whole new series of problems. Like a musical pinball, Albert is buffeted through the sinister underside of academe, a world ruled by lust, greed, and twisted envy, whose existence he never imagined, and in which he is an unwanted stranger. If only he could put a face on the figure in the shadows. If only he could cover up the burn on his face. If only Detective Chapin would stop asking questions. If only someone would explain - everything.
Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
4 people are currently reading
49 people want to read
About the author
David A. Crossman
20 books4 followersMystery writer, musician and artist David Crossman grew up on Vinalhaven and graduated from the island school in 1970.
The roots of his mother's family (Roberts) extend back to the earliest settlers on the island who arrived in the late 18th century. David stressed that he and his younger brother Matt were born on the island and therefore really are Vinalhaven natives. His older brothers Phil and Dick, however, were born in Massachusetts, and are clearly from away.
Crossman is probably best known to Maine readers as a writer of mystery novels. This, however, is not a complete job description of a man with such a diversity of talents. Phil Crossman's younger brother is the author of six books, an accomplished artist and a musician with seven albums to his credit. Currently he and his wife Barbara live in Nashville, Tennessee and, together with their son Jason, have their own TV production company.
When Crossman graduated from high school, the Vietnam War was raging. Benefitting from a high draft number, he left the island and began a peripatetic life that has taken him to "six or seven states and four or five countries". Altogether David said he and his wife Barbara, who he met in Florida, have moved 21 times.
David got the writing gene from his mother Pat, a published author, skilled designer, and talented artist. She produced "a prodigious amount of material," that he is still going through. Three of the four Crossman brothers are writers. Brother Dick is, "a good poet." Phil has been a popular columnist for the Working Waterfront and is author of the book Away Happens. David told me he and Phil, have talked about collaborating, possibly on a TV pilot. David likes the idea but emphasized that "Phil needs to learn to spell."
I asked David where he got the idea for the Bean and Ab books that have become so popular in the last decade. He told me he and his wife were living in Egypt in 1997 when he became homesick for Maine. He started writing about growing up on the island and found it helpful. The exercise ultimately turned into The Secret of The Missing Grave, published in 1999, which was the first book in the Bean Carver and Abby "Ab" Peterson series. He had so much fun he decided to continue.
What is the difference between writing for teenagers and adults? David told me he enjoys doing both. "I had vivid memories of being a teenager growing up on an island so I just plowed ahead. I was confident that I could appeal to a younger audience. Subsequently I have discovered that the series spans the generations."
Crossman's characters are drawn from people he knew growing up on Vinalhaven. The character of Ab was based on Debbie, a summer girl from New York. "She was a friend who became a flame, and is now a friend," he recalled. "We spent a lot of time together and the adventures in my books are bits and pieces of things that really happened, as well as island legends, island locations, combined with flights of fantasy and imagination".
At the end of the third book, The Legend of Burial Island (published in June 2009), David said, "Bean and Ab have aged. They started out as 12 and 13-year-olds. Now they have a tentative, rather tenuous relationship and are not sure how they feel about each other. Their hormones are beginning to kick in. It reminds me of myself back then."
Crossman's other characters are composites of people from the island although he tries to stay faithful to local types. A lot of people on the island have said, "‘I know I saw myself in your book'." "When people recognize themselves it lets me know I am being true to life." Forty years later his memories of island life remain vivid. David says he can conjure them up wherever he happens to be living.
Burial Island is an actual island, near the entrance to Carver's Harbor on Vinalhaven. And yes, there is a legend connected with it. When I told David I'd heard that his first book The Secret of the Missing Grave might lead to a possib
The roots of his mother's family (Roberts) extend back to the earliest settlers on the island who arrived in the late 18th century. David stressed that he and his younger brother Matt were born on the island and therefore really are Vinalhaven natives. His older brothers Phil and Dick, however, were born in Massachusetts, and are clearly from away.
Crossman is probably best known to Maine readers as a writer of mystery novels. This, however, is not a complete job description of a man with such a diversity of talents. Phil Crossman's younger brother is the author of six books, an accomplished artist and a musician with seven albums to his credit. Currently he and his wife Barbara live in Nashville, Tennessee and, together with their son Jason, have their own TV production company.
When Crossman graduated from high school, the Vietnam War was raging. Benefitting from a high draft number, he left the island and began a peripatetic life that has taken him to "six or seven states and four or five countries". Altogether David said he and his wife Barbara, who he met in Florida, have moved 21 times.
David got the writing gene from his mother Pat, a published author, skilled designer, and talented artist. She produced "a prodigious amount of material," that he is still going through. Three of the four Crossman brothers are writers. Brother Dick is, "a good poet." Phil has been a popular columnist for the Working Waterfront and is author of the book Away Happens. David told me he and Phil, have talked about collaborating, possibly on a TV pilot. David likes the idea but emphasized that "Phil needs to learn to spell."
I asked David where he got the idea for the Bean and Ab books that have become so popular in the last decade. He told me he and his wife were living in Egypt in 1997 when he became homesick for Maine. He started writing about growing up on the island and found it helpful. The exercise ultimately turned into The Secret of The Missing Grave, published in 1999, which was the first book in the Bean Carver and Abby "Ab" Peterson series. He had so much fun he decided to continue.
What is the difference between writing for teenagers and adults? David told me he enjoys doing both. "I had vivid memories of being a teenager growing up on an island so I just plowed ahead. I was confident that I could appeal to a younger audience. Subsequently I have discovered that the series spans the generations."
Crossman's characters are drawn from people he knew growing up on Vinalhaven. The character of Ab was based on Debbie, a summer girl from New York. "She was a friend who became a flame, and is now a friend," he recalled. "We spent a lot of time together and the adventures in my books are bits and pieces of things that really happened, as well as island legends, island locations, combined with flights of fantasy and imagination".
At the end of the third book, The Legend of Burial Island (published in June 2009), David said, "Bean and Ab have aged. They started out as 12 and 13-year-olds. Now they have a tentative, rather tenuous relationship and are not sure how they feel about each other. Their hormones are beginning to kick in. It reminds me of myself back then."
Crossman's other characters are composites of people from the island although he tries to stay faithful to local types. A lot of people on the island have said, "‘I know I saw myself in your book'." "When people recognize themselves it lets me know I am being true to life." Forty years later his memories of island life remain vivid. David says he can conjure them up wherever he happens to be living.
Burial Island is an actual island, near the entrance to Carver's Harbor on Vinalhaven. And yes, there is a legend connected with it. When I told David I'd heard that his first book The Secret of the Missing Grave might lead to a possib
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
April 26, 2020
Albert teaches music in a New England college. He also writes music, and records music. Do you see a theme here? Albert doesn't care about anything but the music he feels constantly running through his head, cigarettes, and beer. Oh, and music. He does tolerate the archaeology professor, Tewksbury, who stops in once in a while to bum a cigarette. When Tewks is arrested for--and what's more, convicted of--the murder of another professor, Albert knows something is wrong. The lawyer who represented Tewks points out that she's not a detective (Albert weakly protests that he's a music teacher), so clearly he must do any investigation to clear his friend. But all Albert can do is turn up other suspects. He doesn't want anyone else convicted; he just wants Tewks freed. Along the way he meets suspicious policemen and a teenager who may be an angel in disguise. He also starts to fall in love. And he solves several murders along the way. Incomparable.
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July 19, 2018My instinct is to avoid cozy mysteries because I tend to find amateur sleuths foolish in their investigations, and I basically want to put them in jail for all the laws they break throughout the course of the book. So it's not really a subgenre for me. HOWEVER, Albert, the neurologically atypical amateur sleuth in this book, sidestepped all my annoyances with his own style of grace. I thought his character growth throughout the story was very much earned: he picked up investigative skills and deductive reasoning skills and friendships in a way that felt organic and believable. He practiced his skills, and he learned from his missteps. He related things to his field of interest (music; he's a rather famous musical genius, in fact, who is living a quiet and unbothered life as a college professor) so that he could understand them. I'm ignorant and unqualified to talk about how his neurological atypicism is portrayed, but the other characters in the book didn't appear, to my eye, to treat him as lesser for who he was or the social "mistakes" he made (though a few characters do underestimate him).
I picked up this flying-under-the-radar mystery novel based on the excerpts and the recommendation in this excellent guest review on Dear Author. I wasn't disappointed, because holy cats, character-wise, Albert is a font of awesomeness and fascinatingness and "I need to read what he does next!"-ness. Also, the jokes about academia had me laughing: "Administration had called a meeting to Summarize and Clarify Certain Recent Events Involving the School and Members of Its Faculty. The meeting had been rousingly well attended, leading one administrator to postulate that, while murder was not to be applauded, it certainly did wonders for bringing faculty together. Even the tenured attended."
The downside of the book, however, was that I was underwhelmed by particular dimensions to the plot and the shallowness of some of the other characters. The plot itself was a bit predictable and, well, old-fashioned in its treatment of women.
The point-of-view sometimes tripped me up. Lots of head-hopping, and not all of it graceful. It was an omniscient point of view, but the use of analogies that I didn't think would ever occur to Albert, while we were sorta-semi or most-recently in his point-of-view, threw me: things like metaphors involving baseball or Democrats never seemed like something that Albert would relate to, and so they tossed me out of the story and out of sync with Albert.
Despite the things that bugged me about this book, and especially at its current price of $.99, I'd still recommend this book to readers looking for a unique (and consistently depicted) amateur sleuth or an academic setting that focuses mostly on the arts and humanities (the origins of the Etruscans is part of the academic work involved in the murders, which is pretty cool).
I picked up this flying-under-the-radar mystery novel based on the excerpts and the recommendation in this excellent guest review on Dear Author. I wasn't disappointed, because holy cats, character-wise, Albert is a font of awesomeness and fascinatingness and "I need to read what he does next!"-ness. Also, the jokes about academia had me laughing: "Administration had called a meeting to Summarize and Clarify Certain Recent Events Involving the School and Members of Its Faculty. The meeting had been rousingly well attended, leading one administrator to postulate that, while murder was not to be applauded, it certainly did wonders for bringing faculty together. Even the tenured attended."
The downside of the book, however, was that I was underwhelmed by particular dimensions to the plot and the shallowness of some of the other characters. The plot itself was a bit predictable and, well, old-fashioned in its treatment of women.
The point-of-view sometimes tripped me up. Lots of head-hopping, and not all of it graceful. It was an omniscient point of view, but the use of analogies that I didn't think would ever occur to Albert, while we were sorta-semi or most-recently in his point-of-view, threw me: things like metaphors involving baseball or Democrats never seemed like something that Albert would relate to, and so they tossed me out of the story and out of sync with Albert.
Despite the things that bugged me about this book, and especially at its current price of $.99, I'd still recommend this book to readers looking for a unique (and consistently depicted) amateur sleuth or an academic setting that focuses mostly on the arts and humanities (the origins of the Etruscans is part of the academic work involved in the murders, which is pretty cool).
January 26, 2020
I can almost see the appeal of this "deaths on campus" mystery, because Albert (I don't think one ever gets his last name) is a delightful character, astonishingly eccentric.
But oh, my goodness, is this a lame plot. People's motivations defy credibility. There are three women who incomprehensibly fall in love with a man, and the silliness of the faculty is equally too far off base from real life.
I also question how women are depicted in this story. Almost none of the many female characters comes through as strong and independent. I was uncomfortable with both of the black characters as well. The only other character whom I enjoyed is Jeremy Ash, though a teenager chronically in the hospital without much explanation is another flimsy plot device.
Actually, I am a little embarrassed I read this to the (predictable) conclusion. My wife kept telling me to put it down, and she was right. Oh well.
But oh, my goodness, is this a lame plot. People's motivations defy credibility. There are three women who incomprehensibly fall in love with a man, and the silliness of the faculty is equally too far off base from real life.
I also question how women are depicted in this story. Almost none of the many female characters comes through as strong and independent. I was uncomfortable with both of the black characters as well. The only other character whom I enjoyed is Jeremy Ash, though a teenager chronically in the hospital without much explanation is another flimsy plot device.
Actually, I am a little embarrassed I read this to the (predictable) conclusion. My wife kept telling me to put it down, and she was right. Oh well.
September 13, 2020
Sure wish there were more than 3 in this amazing series!
October 2, 2010
I learned of this author reading another delightful book, They Died in Vain: Overlooked, Underappreciated and Forgotten Mystery Novels. I found the protagonist to be very charming - he's kind of a musician/composer/savant, completely removed from reality. The descriptions of his diet had me laughing out loud. "He had corn and Nestle's Quik for supper; the corn still frozen, like a popsicle, the Quick dry, straight from the can." His forays into Holmesian logic are another source of entertainment. This book is well worth seeking out, and I am looking forward to reading some of Crossman's other work.
July 3, 2012
Delightful, funny, heart-breaking. Musical savant Professor stumbles into love with the redoubtable Miss Bjork and solves three murders, in his absent-minded, dogged, bemused way. I laughed and I cried. I loved it and immediately bought the next in the series, which is good, but not 5 stars. Eccentric academics are the core characters, and the Professor is an eccentric genius.
I read the Kindle version, which is not a perfect translation of the old, print text. There were a couple of places where I stopped cold to puzzle through what the text was supposed to say. I'll save you one of them: Where it says "BLANK" that is clearly supposed to be a blank. Don't let the little glitches keep you away from this, if it sounds like the kind of book you would like.
I read the Kindle version, which is not a perfect translation of the old, print text. There were a couple of places where I stopped cold to puzzle through what the text was supposed to say. I'll save you one of them: Where it says "BLANK" that is clearly supposed to be a blank. Don't let the little glitches keep you away from this, if it sounds like the kind of book you would like.
August 6, 2016
You had me at "Your head’s on fire."
February 10, 2013
Professor Albert is a very interesting character. Great mystery. Looking forward to the next one.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews