1. A DARK HORSE by Craig Johnson. #5 Walt Longmire mystery set in Wyoming. The elections are coming up and Sheriff Longmire is avoiding thinking about it, and things are a bit slow in Absaroka County. Walt's daughter Cady has returned to her home in Philadelphia and he's at loose ends. The Sheriff of a neighboring county sends him a puzzle to chew on and a prisoner to house since their jail is overflowing and Walt eagerly jumps into it. Mary Barsad has confessed to shooting her husband Wade six times in the head after he set their barn afire--with her beloved horses inside. Wade was universally disliked, and were it not for Mary's confession, the suspect list would be a mile long--and would include some ghosts from his past, as he was in the witness protection program. But after talking with Mary, Walt doesn't believe she's guilty--and he goes undercover in Jackson County, posing as an insurance investigator--although his cover doesn't last very long. (I kind of wondered about that, anyway. Walt was born and raised very near where all this action took place and he recognized a few of the characters--so why would they NOT recognize him?) As usual, this was a well-told story in a wonderful voice, and the book was nearly impossible to put down. I love Walt, I love his cast of secondary characters, including the great state of Wyoming, which Johnson obviously loves. With a perfect balance of slow, rambling detail and fast-paced action, and a plot twist I didn't see coming at all, this will likely make my top ten of the year list. The only thing missing for me was the voice of George Guidall who narrates the audio versions--I listened to three of the previous four books and could hear his version of Walt's voice faintly at the back of my mind as I read along. A+
2. THE BELLINI CARD by Jason Goodwin (AUDIO) #3 Yashim the Eunuch historical mystery taking place in the 1830's. This one is set partly in Istanbul and partly in Venice, Italy. The new Sultan, young Abdulmecid asks Yashim to locate a painting by Gentile Bellini--a portrait of Mehmet the Conqueror--that is believed to be in Venice. Yashim's friend Stanislaw Palewski, the Polish ambassador to Turkey, undertakes an undercover role as a rich American out to purchase Venetian art, and Yashim actually takes a back seat role in the book until the last third or so, when all of his complex behind-the-scenes manipulations begin to come to the fore. A richly-woven tale involving the Venetian aristocracy (and its underbelly as well!) including a beautiful Contessa, as well as political intrigue and secrets from the past and present. I love Jason Goodwin's Istanbul, but I must admit that I found all the different twists and turns in this book a bit overwhelming. Perhaps that was in part due to the fact that I listened to this one and couldn't go back to check on something he'd referred to before as I could with the print version of previous books in the series. The multitude of names and titles confused me somewhat, and I have to admit that I wasn't totally enamored of the reader. He did a skillful enough job at the voices, but there was an annoying hint of a whine in his tone that kept distracting me. I think this is one series I will go back to reading in print--but carry on I will! Once again, there were some wonderful evocative descriptions of Yashim's cooking, too. Mouth-watering! I give this one a B+ and look forward to the next.
3. DEATH OF A SQUIRE by Maureen Ash. #2 Bascot de Marins "Templar" mystery set in 1200 Lincoln. King John is coming to Lincoln so the whole town, and most certainly the castle, is astir with preparations. When the squire of Nicolaa de la Haye's brother-in-law is found hanged in the nearby forest, she is concerned that her brother-in-law is somehow involved and that a plot to overthrow the King might be involved--and she needs to know the score before the King's arrival. Bascot de Marins, a Templar knight who is for now a temporary retainer of Nicolaa and her husband Gerard Camville, sheriff of Lincoln, helped her earlier in the year with another investigation, so she asks him once again to investigate and get to the bottom of the squire's death. Hubert de Tournay was not well-liked, being a nosy braggart who was always ferreting out secrets, and also tended to coerce young women to have assignations with him. Was his death the result of a political plot, or was there a more personal motive? I enjoyed this second entry in the series more than the first, as we get to know the main character and his supporting cast better. I've read quite a few books set in this time period and this is the first one I recall where there was actually a supporter of King John among the major cast of characters--Nicolaa de la Haye was staunchly in favor of the King. On a personal level, Bascot struggles with decisions in his own life--whether to rejoin the Templars now that his body and soul are somewhat healed after his years-long captivity in the Holy Land, or permanently become a knight of Nicolaa's household? And what of Gianni, his mute servant whom he rescued from a life of poverty and starvation? Looking forward very much to the next in the series. A.
4. A SHRED OF EVIDENCE by Jill McGown. #7 Lloyd & Hill British police procedural mystery. It had been over 2 years since I read a book in this series, since I was very disappointed in #6, which went backward and forward in time, was bloated and boring and featured long portions that were written from the POV of the suspects/players in the mystery. It just didn't work for me at all, and was a huge shock after the previously stellar books. Every author's allowed one stinker I guess, and this one gets things back on track. A fifteen-year-old school girl is battered and strangled on a public green a few days after the opening of school term. Since Lloyd is off on a weeks-long training course, acting boss Judy Hill starts the investigation off with DS Tom Finch assisting. Lloyd comes back a couple of days early at the behest of HIS boss. There is only one plausible suspect to begin with (save for the ubiquitous "unknown sex fiend") and he is Colin Cochrane, a teacher at the school and celebrity of some note, having been one of England's star runners and now doing the lecture and advertising circuit. Rumor has it that Colin has been having it off with one of the school girls and a letter found in his tracksuit pocket would seem to bear that out. The victim was not, by all accounts, a chaste and virginal fifteen. The body was discovered by Colin's wife while taking their dog for a walk but her story changes slightly from first interview to formal statement such that her husband would be protected with somewhat of an alibi. You just know he's NOT the guy, and although neither Lloyd or Hill think so either, DS Finch is convinced of it. In pursuing evidence against him, other clues come to light and the murderer eventually found, of course. I did figure out the killer in one of those lightbulb moments, but not until very close to the end, having followed one of McGown's adeptly placed red herrings right to the sea. LOL I really enjoyed this, and stayed up a bit past my bedtime to finish it off last night. Was especially glad that Lloyd and Hill were featured more prominently again and it wasn't all about the suspects. I very much look forward to continuing on with this series to its end, which unfortunately came too soon as the author died in 2007. Still, I've got six more to read and savor before I'm done. A.
5. DRAGONDRUMS by Anne McCaffrey. (AUDIO) #3 Harper Hall trilogy within the greater "Pern" fantasy series. I thought this was going to be a continuation of Menolly's story, but instead we get to go on adventures with her young friend Piemer, who has (until now) been the soprano voice in the choir at Harper Hall. However, Piemer's voice has cracked--he's at the age where it's bound to change--so now something else must be figured out for him to do. Being that he always seems to find trouble and is quick on his feet, Master Harper Robinton and his Journeyman, Sebell, decide to apprentice him (officially) to the Drum master, sending and receiving messages, but on the quiet have Pymer report to them and be, for lack of a better word, a spy. And get into hot water he does, on the day of a Gather at one of the outlying Holds, when hiding in the wrong sack after stealing a queen fire lizard egg ends him up on dragonback going "between" to a far off southern locale. Very enjoyable visit to Pern with a great reader and exciting story. I've enjoyed this trilogy within the larger series--hope the next stories are just as interesting! A.
6. A POTION FOR A WIDOW by Caroline Roe. #5 Isaac of Girona medieval mystery featuring the blind Jewish physician in 1350's Spain and his family as well. Daughter Raquel is pining away for her betrothed, Daniel, who is off to Constantinople, and Isaac's Moorish apprentice Yusuf, a ward of the King, is sent to Sardinia for fostering to protect his status. Isaac and Raquel accompany the party on the first part of the journey, but before they can even leave the city gates, a man stumbles in with a knife in his back and dies. When it's discovered that the man was actually an agent of the King, the Bishop asks Isaac to look into things discreetly as he always does. Along the way, Yusuf's party meets up with a young girl posing as a boy hoping to get to Girona to find her family, and this girl ends up with ties to the man who was murdered. I like this series, but the earlier ones were definitely better. There were too many strange coincidences, the plot was at once convoluted and too simplistic, if that makes any sense. We seem also to have lost the depth of the characters that was present in the first few books where I felt more of a real connection. I have two more of the last 3 books in this series and likely will read them if only to see how the family's lives pan out. This was an okay read--light and quick, just not something to rave about. C+
7. KUSHIEL'S CHOSEN by Jacqueline Carey. #2 in the Kushiel's Legacy fantasy series, loosely based on Renaissance Europe. Phèdre nó Delaunay returns to the City of Elua after the death of her adoptive father, Anafriel Delaunay, in the previous book and assumes her place among the peerage as the Comtesse de Montrève, wielding the title her benefactor never got to don. She also resumes her service to the demigods Namaah and Kushiel, both of whom have marked her, which essentially means she is a highly-paid whore who specializes in the pleasure of pain. As an anguissette (the only living one, apparently) marked with a fleck of red in the iris of her left eye, she is meant to be a bearer of pain. The difference here is that in the beliefs of the predominant religion, her service is actually a sacred, religious offering and not something dirty nor illegal. She resumes her trade in order to ferret out details about the treachery of Melisande Shahrizai, who escaped at the end of the last book. Phèdre believes that Melisande is waiting in the wings orchestrating some complicated political coup to take over the throne of Terre d' Ange, and she is right. She doesn't get to stay comfortably at home for long and soon is off on an adventure taking her to a Venice-like city called La Serenissima, and to several other places in her search for information and a way to bring Melisande's plan to ruin. Complex and detailed, with a huge cast of characters, exotic locations, plenty of steamy (but well-written!) sex, twisted plots, strange religions, and even pirates (yo ho ho!), this was an excellent followup to Kushiel's Dart and I am kicking myself many times over for waiting so long (it's been at least 2 1/2 years!) to have gotten to this sequel. I won't make the same mistake again--I have four more of them here awaiting my pleasure. This could easily have gotten overblown and off track with the scope of its contents and so much happening in a relatively short time, but the author skillfully keeps things together and makes this a very difficult book to put down. A+
8. WOLF BROTHER by Michelle Paver. (AUDIO) First in the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness YA fantasy series. This is sort of "Clan of the Cave Bear" for young adults--set during the Stone Age, featuring Torak, a 12-year-old whose father has just been slain by a demonic bear and whose quest (given by his dying father) is to find the Mountain of the World Spirit. Torak had thought this was just a fable told around the campfire, but his Fa seemed to think it real and made Torak promise to try to find it or die trying. He also told Torak that he would find "his guide" who turns out to be an orphaned wolf cub, whom he is surprisingly able to communicate with. They set off together and soon are in the midst of a grand and dangerous adventure. I really wanted to like this book more than I did. It was narrated by Sir Ian McKellan, which is one of the reasons I chose it--he did a stellar job of it too, I must say. But there was just "something" lacking in the book and it took a full 2-3 hours before I was really interested in the story and even then for some reason it just didn't quite measure up to the other YA fantasy I've been listening to. I may move on to the next in series at some point, but it won't be on the front burner. C+
9. THE LAST TEMPLAR by Michael Jecks. #1 in the Knights Templar medieval series featuring bailiff Simon Puttock and 'retired' Templar knight Sir Baldwin Furnshill in Devon, UK. The time is 1316, several years after the Templars have been disbanded and disgraced, many of their number tortured and executed at the hands of the Inquisition. Sir Baldwin heads to his boyhood home, Furnshill Manor, to resume duty as the Lord of the manor after the death of his elder brother. Simon, meanwhile, is the brand new bailiff of Lydford Castle and finds himself very busy in the first days of his new position. First, a villager is burned to death in the fire of his cottage and then a group of monks is waylaid by highwayment, the abbot among them taken for ransom and later found burned at the stake over a fire in the woods. Simon, a rather sensitive man, is devastated and somewhat indecisive as to how to proceed, and Baldwin steps in to assist. They become friends, but Baldwin is wary of sharing the secrets of his past so soon after meeting Simon so their relationship is a little superficial at first. When a group of travelers is brutally attacked, robbed and murdered, things escalate quickly and it's soon determined that there are actually three separate crimes and not one roving band of killers. Bit of a surprising end, but by then I just wanted the book to be done. I chose this book for a challenge I was in with a category called, "Everyone Deserves a Second Chance" where you read an author you'd previously read and didn't care for. I liked this book better than the other Jecks I'd read a few years ago, but not much. There were many repetitive parts, and Jecks' propensity to describe every person you come across in great detail down to their wrinkles got old really fast. And I didn't particularly like Simon Puttock's character--he seemed like a whiny wimp to me. At any rate, at least for now, I will not be continuing on in this series. C+
10. THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO by Stieg Larsson #1 in the Milennium trilogy. Translated from Swedish and featuring journalist Mikael Blomkvist, middle-aged co-founder of Millennium magazine, and freelance investigator Lisbeth Salander, a pierced, tattooed twenty-something computer hacker with a definite antisocial bent. Blomkvist is convicted of libeling a billionaire financier and, intending to take a break is instead hired by Henrik Vanger, an octogenarian businessman to investigate the disappearance and probable murder of his niece Harriet decades previously. It's a locked-room mystery, as the Vangers lived on an island with but one access, and that was blocked by a tanker crash. Blomkvist is intrigued but not sure what he can come up with that the much-obsessed Vanger himself hasn't already considered. To entice him, Vanger promises some juicy information about the billionaire that will vindicate Blomkvist's near-ruinous fine and prison sentence when he has completed his investigation. Reluctantly, Mikael agrees, but though he reviews hundreds and thousands of pages of documents and photographs, it isn't until midway through the book when Salander comes into the investigation that things begin to really move, and they realize they're onto something much more than the disappearance of one teenage girl thirty-odd years ago--something horrifying, grisly and on-going! To be honest, I nearly gave up on this book by the time I got to my mandatory 50 page trial, and probably would have, had I not read from a number of people that it's a very slow starter. I'm glad I read it--it was a good, solid thriller with some interesting characters, but I can't say it came anywhere close to living up to all the raves and hype. Not only was the beginning slow, the writing throughout was rather meandering and tangential at times--could definitely have been tightened up a bit, though perhaps that was partly due to the translation. I also figured out two of the major plot twists/solutions well in advance. And the ending? That was sort of like an afterthought more than anything. For me, as an American, even one of Swedish descent, it was also a little difficult to try to come to terms with all the various place names and cultural vagaries, but the author can't be faulted for that, since he's writing about his homeland for his countrymen. In short, it was certainly a good first book which I liked, and I will most definitely read on in the series, but this book suffered from "hypeitis" in that it in no way lived up to the high expectations I had for it. B.
11. THE PURRFECT MURDER by Rita Mae Brown (AUDIO) #16 Mrs. Murphy cozy cat mystery set in Crozet, Virginia. It's autumn in Virginia, and Harry and Fair are busy on the farm with various harvestings, but a good murder mystery will always distract Harry. When the local OB/GYN doctor who works at Planned Parenthood is shot by a sniper, many in Crozet are grieved, but not terribly surprised, as the doctor had been getting threats from radical Pro-Life groups for years due to his willingness to perform abortions. A rabidly religious man comes forward to claim responsibility, but then the doctor's wealthy female patients begin to get threats--and one is murdered at a fundraiser which Harry and all her friends are attending--and Harry's friend Tazio is found standing over Carla's body with the knife in her hand. Harry is determined to clear Tazio's name and begins to ask questions--she can't even rely on her friends Sheriff Shaw and Deputy Cooper for information, as this murder took place in another county. Are these two murders connected or are they about two very different issues? Harry and the critters are on the case! While I enjoy this reader (Kate Forbes) very much and enjoy a visit to Crozet, the actual mysteries in these books are getting less and less mysterious, it seems. The red herrings are very red indeed--I would even say scarlet--because I spotted them a mile away and knew the killer from the time of introduction. Harry, as usual, does some really stupid things--for being such a smart and saavy lady, it's amazing how she continues to defy logic to do the dangerous things she does. Enjoyable, but also frustrating, if that makes any sense! B-
12. THE EYE OF JADE by Diane Wei Liang. #1 Mei Wang mystery set in modern-day Beijing, China. Mei Wang is a young woman in her twenties who left her job at the Ministry of Security because she refused to play the game and become one of the ministers' mistress. Of course in doing so, she lost face and most of her acquaintances think she 'lost' her job. Now with her own business as an "information consultant" (since private detectives are forbidden by the government) she struggles along to make ends meet and has a hard time getting people to take her seriously, being that she is a young woman. When an old family friend whom she calls "Uncle Chen" comes to hire her to find a Han Dynasty artifact, she eagerly takes on the case and ends up in hot water several times before solving the crime. A lot of this book was setting the stage for Mei's future exploits, I think--letting us get to know her and her background. Mei's father died in the labor camps when she was just a small girl, which colored pretty much her whole life. Her mother struggled to raise Mei and her sister Lu, who is now marrying a rich businessman, and of course Mei as the unmarried older sister, is never in favor. When her mother suffers a stroke and ends up in hospital, despite the fact that they don't get on well, Mei is devastated. I had a hard time getting "into" the book--Mei did seem in some ways to be a rather silly young woman, but I have to admit she did mature somewhat by the end, confronting several ghosts from her past. The strength of the book was an introduction to life in modern-day Beijing (somewhere I'd never been before) with the kow-towing that must be done to stay on the good side of the government, and even to get decent medical care. She also didn't shy away from showing the whole spectrum of life, from the dark, seedy areas to the beautiful gardens and areas where the wealthy live. The author herself was born in Beijing and spent time in the labor camps as a child, and was a member of the Student Democracy Movement, even participating in the protest in Tiananmen Square before emigrating. These aspects were very interesting, and even though the mystery itself was rather weak and almost a sideline, I'm willing to cut the author some slack and see if her second effort (which I have here on Mt. TBR) is a little beefier in content. B-.
13. BLOOD AT THE ROOT (also published as DEAD RIGHT) by Peter Robinson. #9 Chief Inspector Alan Banks British police procedural. A young man is found beaten to death in an alley, and and after identifying him, it's discovered that Jason Fox was a member of a white supremacist group called The Albion League. He was seen having words with three Pakistani youths in a nearby pub, and they become the natural first suspects. But Banks doesn't believe they're guilty and begins searching into Fox's life to find out more about the youth, which leads him down a path into not only hate-groups, but international drug rings, gangsters and a whole slew of ne'er-do-wells. Meanwhile, he has personal issues to deal with as his wife Sandra has decided that a trial separation is needed and goes to stay with her parents. Banks is devastated and realizes that he'd taken his twenty-some year marriage quite for granted. He also gets into hot water with the Chief Constable, Jimmy Riddle. I enjoyed this entry in the series quite a lot, although a couple of the minor plot twists were easy peasy to figure out. The main mystery of who killed Fox was rather a natural progression to the ending without much of a surprise, either. The writing was a little uneven though--at times wonderfully evocative and poignant, and at other times seeming a bit rushed. Still, this has become one of my favorite series and I'll definitely keep reading onward. B+
14. THE BLACK DOVE by Steven Hockensmith. #3 "Holmes on the Range" mystery featuring Old Red and Big Red Amlingmeyer in the 1890's American west. This episode finds the brothers, previously cattle wranglers and now wannabe detectives, in San Francisco. The ginger-haired brothers see their old friend Dr. Chan (from the train episode last book) and follow him into Chinatown, where he nearly shoots Big Red, not realizing who they are. The next day when Old Red smells a mystery, they go his shop in Chinatown to see why he's so skittish, but they find him dead of an apparent suicide, having gassed himself to death. Of course Big Red starts his deducifyin' and sees several clues that lead him to believe that Chan was helped to the other side. With the help of Diana Corvus, the Southern Pacific railroad detective that they worked with last book, the brothers navigate the seedy and dangerous Chinatown attempting to solve Chan's murder and find out what happened to The Black Dove, the name given to a much-desired prostitute that Chan actually purchased from her madam. Along the way, in typical Amlingmeyer fashion, they manage to piss off just about everyone who's anyone in Chinatown, including rival tongs (gangs) and the so-called law in this action-packed, humorous adventure. I enjoyed this book as much as I've enjoyed the previous entries in the series. The author doesn't shy away from controversial issues of the day, so the book (while humorous) isn't totally light and fluffy. I'm not a fan of typical "westerns" but I do really enjoy this series a lot! A.
15. TO YOUR SCATTERED BODIES GO by Philip Josè Farmer. #1 Riverworld Saga classic Sci-fi. Sir Richard Burton, nineteenth-century explorer, linguist, and often controversial man, awakens from death totally naked and hairless alongside a river. After some initial disorientation, he sees many other people in the same state--people from not only a variety of cultures, races, religions but also different times. In his first days, he meets not only a twenty-first century American, but a neanderthal man, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's concentration camps and an alien (who apparently brought about the demise of earth in 2008) as well as several other more famous people, such as Hermann Göring. As these people attempt to communicate, to figure out where they are and why they've been resurrected, and just to learn "how things work" in this riverworld, Burton (who considered himself an athiest) realizes that if this is 'heaven' it's not much better than Earth, in that men are still selfish, greedy, power-hungry beings and he and his friends struggle to survive the brutal world. After many months, he decides to try to lead a group in a boat up the River to see where it begins to determine if they can figure out what it's all about. He also learns that it's impossible to die--when someone is killed or dies, they simply resurrect again somewhere else along the River, which after some time is determined to be millions or billions of miles long. It's been awhile since I've read any classic Sci-Fi and this was very refreshing and interesting to me, although it was written back in the early 70's so I suppose is a bit "dated" in that sense. Some stirring philosophical debate, a very interesting concept. There are several more books in the series and I've ordered the next--which features Samuel Clemens! A.
16. MIND SCRAMBLER by Chris Grabenstein. #5 John Ceepak mystery set along the Jersey shore, told from the POV of Ceepak's young partner, Danny Boyle. Danny and Ceepak are of to Atlantic City to obtain the deposition of a former cellmate of Ceepak's father in hopes of obtaining testimony that will convict him. (Yes, Ceepak's father is a real scumbucket that he hopes to see locked away with the key melted down.) While there, Danny bumps into his former girlfriend Katie--a kindergarten teacher who moved to California, and who is now employed as the nanny for Richard Rock, a big-time magician and illusionist performing at a ritzy casino in AC. Katie says she wants to talk to Danny about something, but before that happens, she turns up dead--and not only dead, but dressed in a kinky S&M outfit and looking like the victim of erotic asphyxiation--of course, we all know that wasn't the case and that she was murdered. But why? And did Katie really have a secret life that is totally out of character for the sweet girl Danny dated? Danny's mind is a bit scrambled with his personal involvement in the case, but Ceepak keeps him on the straight and narrow as they are deputized by the local constabulary to help investigate, muddling through the hidden world of stage magicians. I enjoy this series more with each book, as we get to know Ceepak and Danny better. The bad guy stuck out like a sore thumb for me right from the beginning, but I had no idea why or the how it was done details, so still made for a very interesting, enjoyable read. More, more! A.
17. COYOTE by Linda Barnes. #3 Carlotta Carlyle mystery featuring the PI and sometime-cabbie in Boston, MA. A young Spanish-speaking woman, possibly an illegal from some Central American country, comes to Carlotta as a walk-in client. She has with her one of Carlotta's business cards and a newspaper, pointing to an article about a dead woman named Manuela Estefan. The woman claims in halting Spanish that the dead person isn't Manuela Estefan--SHE is, and the woman had her green card. She wants Carlotta to get it back without involving the police, and she seems decidedly afraid. When Carlotta leaves the room briefly, the woman disappears, leaving behind an envelope with five crisp hundred-dollar bills behind, but no way to contact her. She turns up dead a couple of days later, much the same way the original woman was killed--with her hands cut off! Tackling a big social issue of essentially slavery of illegals for cheap labor, this book tells the story of how a "coyote" operates, helping get people to the country and then basically using them for whatever they want to. Meanwhile, Carlotta's "little sister" Paolina--her sister from the Big Sisters program--has returned from Columbia with her mother, where she's been visiting for several weeks. Paolina, now almost eleven, seems changed--she's started back-talking, skipping school, and where the relatively happy and enthusiastic girl had been is a dejected, sullen one and she won't talk to Carlotta about it or explain why. Paolina's behavior and the murder investigation ultimately end up tied together. I didn't figure out the bad guy in this one til very near the end, and I've enjoyed getting to know Carlotta a little better with each book in the series. This was the first one I'd read in print (I listened to the others in audio) and liked the smooth, easy-reading style just as much as I enjoyed listening to the others. A.
18. UNCOMMON GROUNDS by Sandra Balzo. #1 Maggy Thorsen mystery set in Brookhills, Wisconsin. Maggy and her business partners Caron and Patricia are set to open their new coffee shop, Uncommon Grounds, in a strip mall in suburban Brookhills. Maggy, late on her first day, opens the door only to find Patricia collapsed on the floor, a pitcher of milk spilled around her. At first it appears to be some sort of natural event but it's later determined that the espresso machine was interfered with and that Patricia was deliberately electrocuted. Although Patricia could be a bit intense and overbearing, Maggy can't think why anyone would want to kill her--until some previously unknown facts about her come to light, and Maggy realizes how little she really knew Patricia. Then the suspect list begins to burgeon, though the new sheriff in town, Jake Pavlick, seems to be happy with the easiest result. Gary Donovan, the town's chief of police and long time friend of Maggy, helps her mull over possibilities--she just doesn't believe that Patricia's husband David is capable of murder as everyone seems to think--but when he turns up dead of an apparent suicide, she begins to wonder. I had a vague inkling about the bad guy early on but wasn't sure til about two-thirds of the way through. I enjoyed the book quite a lot more than I expected, as I've had a pretty low opinion of most "themed" cozy series I've tried lately--to the point where I haven't bothered finishing most of them. But this has a little harder edge to it than your "typical" cozy mystery, and I liked Maggy a lot--she seemed to be a very "real" person with some depth of character--and not an annoying one!--and her supporting cast is also coming along nicely. I found a few bloopers (wrong form of a word used, wrong character name, etc) which threw me off guard a bit, and Maggy did admittedly suffer from that old 'amateur sleuth' curse where she does dumb things like withholding evidence and investigating dangerous things on her own....but that almost seems de rigeur these days. I'm glad to have found a cozy series that I'm actually looking forward to carrying on with. B+
19. THE LAST OLYMPIAN by Rick Riordan. (AUDIO) #5 Percy Jackson and the Olympians YA fantasy. Percy and his pals from Camp Half-Blood (so named because its denizens are demi-gods with one parent being a Greek god or goddess) are preparing for the big battle--the battle to save Mount Olympus--which, in its present incarnation, is at the Empire State Building in New York. Forced to fight a two-pronged battle--one against the monster Typhos, who is headed for New York, and the other against the evil Kronos (who is using the body of Percy's once-friend Luke as his host) and his army of Titans and fallen demi-gods. Meanwhile, Percy--about to turn sixteen, when the prophecy featuring him is due to come to fruition--tries to get things sorted in his personal life: is AnnaBeth more than just a friend? And where does Rachel Elizabeth Dare, the mortal girl who can see through the mist, figure into things? Percy begins dreaming of things past, of Luke, Thalia and AnnaBeth's childhoods and starts to piece together why things are the way they are. A tale of Greek mythology and prophecy, friendship and betrayal and loyalties strained to the breaking point, Riordan brings the whole series to a satisfying climactic end while still leaving room for potential future expansion--which I personally hope happens! Excellent book, excellent series, highly recommended for young and old alike! A+
20. THE WITCH HUNTER by Bernard Knight. #8 Crowner John historical mystery set in late 12th century Devon. A local tradesman falls over dead of an apparent apoplexy while riding his horse, in front of witnesses. But the man's widow insists that he was done to death by a witch's spell, the witch having been hired by her husband's arch enemy, who has been trying unsuccessfully to talk him into selling his lands off. A corn dolly effigy with a pin in its heart is found in the man's saddle bag, but even before that little artifact is discovered, the widow insists that Crowner John be notified to hold an inquest. Sir John thinks it's all a bunch of hogwash and denies her claim, and because the widow is a friend of his harpy-like wife Matilda, hears no end of complaint about it over the next few days. And when the widow's cousin Gilbert, a canon in one of the local churches, begins preaching against witchcraft and exhorting the church to actively stifle the "pagan ways" they've passively condoned by looking the other way, the whole city of Exeter gets stirred up, with several local "wise women" in danger of being condemned by the church or harmed by the townspeople. Crowner John is still reluctant to get involved, although his brother-in-law Richard de Revelle, the sheriff, has jumped on Gilbert's bandwagon. But when John's own mistress, Nesta--the proprietor of a local inn--comes under a cloud of suspicion, then he begins to feel an urgent need to get to the bottom of the original death, if only to show that the man was killed by very earthly means and thus dispel the furor in the town. A typical entry in the series, which I mostly enjoyed--certainly for the atmosphere and sense of time and place. Knight does a wonderful job of invoking the mores and culture of the times, as well as the sights, sounds and (often not so nice) smells. I have to admit though that sometimes the author tends to overuse certain words or phrases in description of his characters. For example, Crowner John, who is rather taciturn and crabby, often will "snap" or "bark" or "growl" when he's speaking. His brother-in-law, somewhat of a dandified popinjay, tends to "bray." At times it's enough to make me grit my teeth a bit--but certainly not enough of a problem to stop me from reading on in the series. B+
Current reads: LABYRINTH by Kate Mosse and listening to MORETA: DRAGONLADY OF PERN by Anne McCaffrey--but it's doubtful I'll finish either of those tomorrow, so this likely ends my list for August. (And just WHERE has the summer gone, I'd like to know??)
Cheryl
Monday, August 3, 2009
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
JULY 2009 READING LIST
1. THE LAMMAS FEAST by Kate Sedley. #11 Roger the Chapman medieval mystery. Roger is firmly ensconced at home in Bristol with his growing family (wife Adela, daughter Elizabeth, step-son Nicholas and new baby Adam) and feeling a little smothered, especially in the heat of summer in the small one-room cabin they're renting from the Priory. So when a series of murders plague the city, Roger of course is interested and begins poking his nose into the investigation as the Lammas Day festivities and week-long St. James' Fair approach. The sheriff's deputy is content to accept whatever solution seems easier, but Roger believes all the murders are tied together and seeks to figure out why and how. The mystery in this book (like pretty much every one in the series so far) was rather painfully obvious--it's kind of funny actually because each time I read one of these, I figure it out very early and then think, "Oh surely not!" and think the author's just throwing out a red herring. But it never is! LOL But despite that, I really do enjoy the books--the characters, the settings, the period details--it just 'works' for me despite the simplicity of the mysteries. A.
2. EATERS OF THE DEAD by Michael Crichton. (AUDIO) Narrated by the incomparable George Guidall, I figured I would finally investigate the book behind one of my favorite movies of all time (The 13th Warrior.) This is one case where the movie outshines the book. It's not that it's a bad book, it's just rather dry, being a slight dramatization, Crichton's take on a real historical document, a journal kept by one Ahmad ibn Fadlan of his travels as an ambassador from the Caliph of Baghdad to the Volga Bulgars. On the way, he was sidetracked and ended up on adventures with a band of Vikings, going deep into their cold north lands and seeing many things that were an affront to him and his Muslim religion; this took place in the 10th century. As a journal meant to relay facts, it was somewhat of a recitation (we saw this, we did that, we spent this many days here and traveled that many days until the next stop...and the phrase "I saw this with my own eyes" was used a lot, too.) While Crichton obviously embellished and made it more interesting than it probably was in reality, there were a lot of asides and footnotes, which the reader did very well, using different tones of voice to indicate a further explanation which was not a part of Fadlan's actual journal. It was a good listen, especially because of Guidall's reading. There were some differences between the movie and the book, but the basic premise was the same. B.
3. A COTSWOLD KILLING by Rebecca Tope. #1 Thea Osborne mystery, set in (duh!) the Cotswolds. Thea is a forty-something year-old recently widowed house sitter--a brand new house sitter on her first job minding the home of Clive and Jennifer Reynolds while they are on a Caribbean holiday. On the first full day of her occupation, she discovers a dead body in the pond on the Reynolds' property, which considerably livens up what promised to be a rather dull three weeks following Clive's extensive "do this and that" lists. Thea's brother-in-law is a Chief Inspector in another area but has apparently been "looking into" some sort of fishy business in that area and although he won't elaborate, Thea wonders if this death has something to do with James's investigation. There is an odd cast of villagers, and definitely something 'weird' about many of them, and with Thea not knowing them or the history of the interactions there, it's all that much more difficult to know what's going on. I have to admit I was somewhat disappointed with this book; it was disjointed and not really cohesive. I couldn't get a good sense of who Thea was as a person, and her actions were often very contradictory from one minute to the next. It wasn't really bad, just sort of... "meh" I guess. This series of books has been hard to come by--I've had the second and third books on my wishlist at PBS for about a year and a half and have only moved up one spot on one of the books. My library doesn't have them either, so being that I was not bowled over with excellence in this opening entry, I think I will delete them from my WL and relegate this series to one of those I'm choosing not to pursue. C.
4. DEATH OF A COZY WRITER by G.M. Malliet. #1 St. Just mystery. Adrian Beauclerk-Fisk is a writer of cozy British mysteries, and he's also an absolute beast. Pompous, phony, and cruel to his family, frequently changing his will in favor of whichever of his children has momentarily pleased him (or displeased him the least), he decides to have some real fun by inviting his four children to his wedding. They are aghast of course, seeing a threat to their inheritances, but they all head toward his manor, figuratively attempting to elbow their way into his favor and hopefully talk him out of this marriage to an obvious gold digger. (It takes one to know one!) Then Sir Adrian drops the bombshell that his marriage is a done deal, that he and Violet are already man and wife and that his will has (yet again) been changed--but he doesn't say how. Shortly thereafter, Sir Adrian's eldest child Ruthven is brutally murdered, and it's not long before he follows his son to the afterlife. Just about everyone has motive to kill one or another of them, so who dunnit? I admit that I was surprised by the ending, but to be honest, I didn't much care by that point. The book started very slowly, and I nearly gave it up since by the time I hit page 100 (1/3 of the way through the book) there had not yet been a murder, nor had we met DCI St. Just, our intrepid hero. There was just too much set-up, and in reflecting back, the set-up didn't really give many clues to the murderer. Once St. Just entered the scene, things did improve. I like him, and Sgt. Fear too, and wish that his character had been more developed. There is some wry humor that I found amusing, but the overall package of this book was just mediocre to me. I will likely read the next one, but I've deleted it from my wishlist and just added it to my library list. If St. Just develops further in that book I would say the series has promise. C+
5. THE RAVENS OF BLACKWATER by Edward Marston. #2 in the Domesday medieval mysteries, featuring Gervase Bret and Ralph Delchard and their cohorts Canon Hubert and Brother Simon, who travel around England at the behest of King William the Conqueror. The year is 1086, and the mission of our motley crew is to compile a so-called Domesday Book, in which every person and their lands are catalogued--and of course, appropriately taxed. They investigate cases of fraud, where landholders bilk other people out of their rightful property on the sly and in doing so avoid paying the taxes owed the King. In this case, they are off to Blackwater Hall near the town of Maldon in Essex. The local lord, Hamo FitzCorbucion, has apparently been stealing lands for years and several have finally complained, despite the risk of being killed for speaking out. Upon arrival, Gervase and Ralph learn that Hamo is out of the country and his eldest son Guy has just been brutally slain. Gervase, a lawyer, becomes interested in the case and they come to the conclusion that the murder is indeed related to their land-grab investigation, and thus they stay to get it all sorted out. This is only the second in the series, but already I think it will become one of my favorites. Gervase and Ralph are two very different characters--Gervase being a gentle soul who is betrothed to his beloved Alys and chaste, Ralph being a Knight who fought in King William's battles to conquer England and a man of lusty appetites. While this does occasionally cause some conflict, the two genuinely like each other and are friends, so it works well. The two clerics who travel with them round off the foursome, and the secondary characters are also interesting and well-drawn. The mysteries are also well-done, with plenty of clues dropped along the way, including some enticing red herrings that always seem to lead me astray to the wrong conclusion. I'm not often surprised anymore, so that's always a treat. I did figure out part of this one but not until very close to the end. Well done and looking forward to more! A+
6. DRANGONSINGER by Anne McCaffrey (AUDIO) #2 Harper Hall trilogy in the Pern series. This book continues where the first in this trilogy-within-a-huge-series left off, with fifteen-year-old Menolly, formerly of Half-Circle Sea Hold, now at the Harper Hall, where musicians are trained. The book chronicles her first week in the Hall, her wonderment and awe at how her music-making is not only welcomed but encouraged--at Half-Circle, girls were not allowed to become Harpers, so she was actually beaten for writing music and singing her tunes! It tells of the adjustment of those in the Hall to her, and more pointedly, to her nine fire lizards, which had previously been thought to be naught but mythical creatures. There are friendships made, and enemies acquired as well--as there are bound to be jealousies when someone has as much natural talent as Menolly. It is a week of huge changes and adjustment for Menolly, and it was a delight to have this reader (Sally Darling) take us through all those highs and lows. I am particularly enjoying this trilogy within the greater Pern series and hope that even after it has been completed, we will return to Menolly's story at some point later on. A+
7. WIFE OF THE GODS by Kwei Quartey. Debut novel (not sure if it is an intended series or not) featuring Detective Inspector Darko Dawson in Accra, the major city in Ghana, Africa. Dawson is off to a small village near the city of Ho in the Volta region when a young medical student is found murdered in the forest. Gladys Mensah was an outspoken young medical student who volunteered much of her time educating neighboring villages about HIV and prevention. She was also outspoken against trokosi, or ritual enslavement of women by so-called fetish priests. Were one of these activities what got Gladys killed, or was it something personal? Though she seemed to be universally loved by all who knew her, the suspect list is by no means short. Darko is called in from Accra (bypassing Ho CID) when some political pressure is brought to bear. He's suited to the task as he speaks Ewe, the regional dialect, and he has family in the area--an aunt and uncle whom he hasn't seen since he was a child, when his mother disappeared. The mystery of his mother's disappearance is also brought into the present-day investigation. I really enjoyed this book--it was from a culture that I know little about which always sparks my interest. I had mixed feelings about Darko--though I liked him, he had a problem with rage that he didn't seem to be able to handle well, which was more than a little disturbing in some instances. The writing style was fluid and easy to read. The only downfall really is that the plot was so transparent. I did figure the mystery out very early on (both of them, actually!) but I do that a lot, so it didn't lower my appreciation for the book as a whole very much. I hope the author continues with more Darko Dawson books--I would definitely look for them and would like to hear more about what happens with Darko, his wife Christine and their son Hosiah. While I enjoy Alexander McCall Smith's series set in Botswana, it's nice to have a flip side to Mma Ramotswe's Africa, a darker and more realistic side. Well-done first book! B+
8. FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES by Donna Leon. #9 Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery set in Venice, Italy. Guido gets a big surprise one lazy Saturday morning when Franco Rossi, an official from the housing commission pays him a visit to essentially tell him that his apartment doesn't exist. In reviewing and reconciling building permits and architectural plans, it seems his downstairs neighbor has the top floor of his apartment building and any permits and building done after that is null and void. Rossi tells him the commission will be in touch, but it's several weeks later when Guido hears from the man again--this time, Rossi makes a call stating that he hadn't realized at the time of the visit that Guido was a policeman and now there is something fishy going on at his office that he wants to talk to him about. He's calling from a cell phone which Guido says isn't secure and asks him to call back from a public pay phone. Rossi never calls and Guido discovers that he is in a coma in hospital from a fall, but never regains conciousness and dies. Meanwhile, Vice-Questore Patta's son is nicked on a drugs charge while at University and Patta asks Guido to use his network of contacts to keep it out of the papers. As is often the case with this series, there isn't really a hard and fast solution to the crime and justice seems a bit nebulous. But I enjoy them to the hilt. With the wonderful characters and setting, a visit to Brunetti's Venice always throws me thoroughly into another culture. A
9. A BEAUTIFUL PLACE TO DIE by Malla Nunn (AUDIO) A powerful book set in 1952 South Africa, when apartheid was just 'ramping up' and the laws that separated and regulated race were newly enacted. DS Emmanuel Cooper is sent from Johannesburg CID to investigate the murder of a white policeman near the village of Jacob's Rest. Captain Willem Pretorius, an Afrikaner with an impeccable reputation is found in the river, shot twice. The whole town is grieving--particularly his sons--large, brutish louts certain of their rightful place in the world and their God-given right to wreak retribution on whoever killed their Pa. Certain that this heinous crime had to be committed by someone passing through, probably a native African or "colored" (mixed race) person, the family attempt to shanghai Cooper's investigation, which is already compromised because those of the "lesser classes" are very reluctant to speak out against anyone of the ruling Afrikaner class. When the Security Branch of the government moves in and begins attempting to tie Pretorius' murder to a Communist plot, Cooper is essentially shoved aside and assigned to working on a series of attacks and rapes of colored women in the year previous to Pretorius' death--which, that case being of little import to anyone in power, is a real slap in the face. During that investigation, he continues to glean information with the help of Constable Shabalala, Pretorius' Zulu co-worker, about Captain Pretorius that shows him that despite the public show of grief, there are many people who are relieved that he is dead and that the town leader was not as spotless as believed. Shabalala remains rather reticent about his longtime friend, yet always stands behind Cooper in his investigation.This was a great book--I can't say I always enjoyed it per se, as there are a lot of unsettling and unpleasant parts to it, things to make ones blood boil, but the author strives for the mood and realistic setting for how things were at the time. The reader (Saul Reichlin) was excellent, handling many different accents and voices very well. The plot was rather complicated with several sub-plots that were almost more interesting than the murder mystery itself. Parts of the mysteries I figured out well in advance but not the actual "whodunit" itself. Excellent--not sure if this will become a series with Cooper featured in more books, but if it is, I will definitely be seeking them. A+
10. MURDER IN LITTLE ITALY by Victoria Thompson. "Gaslight" historical mystery #8 set in early 1900's New York with widowed midwife Sarah Brandt and Detective Frank Malloy. Summoned to the Ruocco home above their Italian restaurant in Little Italy to help deliver a baby, Sarah Brandt soon finds trouble on her hands when the size of the baby points out obviously that Antonio Ruocco could not possibly be the baby's father--even allowing for the fact that Nainsi O'Hara was pregnant when they married, they were expecting a seven-month baby instead of the full-term plus size baby she delivered. Nainsi's mother-in-law, Patrizia, matriarch of the famity, wants
her to take the bastard baby and go. Sarah convinces her to let Nainsi stay until she's recovered, but she returns the following morning to check on her patient only to find her dead. Nainsi's mother, arriving a short time later, begins screaming that the Italian family killed her daughter, and insists the police be called. Thus Sarah ends up working again with Frank Malloy, who has been directed by Commissioner Teddy Roosevelt (a friend of Sarah's prominent family) to solve this crime and fast as the death sparks a series of riots between Italian and Irish gangs and threatens to rip the city of New York apart. This was a light, enjoyable read, typical of the series with a mystery that wasn't too hard to figure out but a nice visit with "old friends" in the form of the main characters. There was some interesting details about the political machinations of the gangs and the rampant corruption in the city at that time. Looking forward to the next one. A.
11. DEATH'S HALF-ACRE by Margaret Maron. (AUDIO) #14 Judge Deborah Knott mystery, narrated by C.J. Critt. Spring has arrived in Colleton County, North Carolina and once again the debate as to whether to develop and build or to preserve and protect the countryside ramps up. Many issues are being hotly debated among friends, family and colleagues of Judge Knott, and the County Commissioners have their plates full. When the head of the Commission turns up missing for an important meeting and then later is found dead of an apparent suicide--with a letter implicating herself and vaguely hinting at impropriety of others--everyone who knew Candace Bradshaw
is surprised. Not necessarily that the ambitious woman might have been doing some shady deals, but that she would kill herself over it. Sure enough, a couple of days later, Deborah's husband deputy sheriff Dwight Bryant learns from the coroner that Candace was murdered, and with a list of suspects as long as your arm, it's not going to be easy to narrow it down. Of course Deborah tries to remain cool and uninterested but her curiosity gets the better of her and soon she is in the thick of things. Meanwhile, Deborah spots her octogenarian father Kezzie having a very expensive pair of earrings appraised and wonders what he's got up his sleeve--but knows better than to ask outright. Let's just say that her old Daddy is just as sharp as he ever was and a bit of the rogue con man comes to the surface in his caper. A very enjoyable trip down south with Deborah and her very large extended family, as always. I spotted the killer very early on, but it was just that old gut instinct kicking in--there were several times I doubted my proclamation but at the end I was right after all. I'm all caught up with this series now--although the next one comes out in August. A
12. WARBREAKER by Brandon Sanderson. This is a stand-alone fantasy novel, one in which the author creates a totally unique world, a world where things don't quite work as we know them, a world with BioChromatic Breath--which is used almost like currency. Don't have it, and you're a Drab. Have enough and you're practically a God. This is several stories within a story, woven skillfully together into a cohesive epic tale that grabs hold of you and won't let you put the book down. Siri is the third (read: unimportant) daughter of the King of Idris and is shocked when her father sends her to Hallandren to wed the God-King Susebron instead of her older sister Vivenna, who has been groomed for just that position her entire life. Vivenna decides to attempt to rescue her sister, whom she feels must be totally out of her element and miserable, and in doing so breaks out of her 'perfect, compliant daughter' mode and hooks up with a band of mercenaries who had been helping one of her father's spies in Hallandren. Lightbringer, one of the Returned Gods of Hallandren, begins having flashes of memory of his previous life--do these visions relate to present day as prophecy or are they just memories? And who are (or were) Vasher and Denth, opposing each other in an effort to start (or stop?) a war? A tale of two very differing religions and countries, with lifestyles and beliefs that are miles apart, headed towards what seems an inevitable war. Political and religious intrigue, dark magic, and a whole host of people who are not who or what they seem, combine together with Sanderson's easy reading style to make this an excellent read. He writes in such a way that you care about all the characters, even though they are on opposing sides and are very different people. This was the first Sanderson book I've read, and I can assure you it won't be the last. A+
13. KITTY TAKES A HOLIDAY by Carrie Vaughn. #3 Kitty Norville paranormal mystery. Kitty has decided to take a break from hosting her supernatural talk show, The Midnight Hour, and heads for the hills (an isolated cabin in the mountains) to work on writing a book she's contracted for to share her life and experiences since becoming a werewolf four years previously. She's not making much progress, but her efforts are interrupted by the appearance of werewolf-hunter Cormac with her friend and lawyer Ben O'Farrell, who has been bitten and is now also a werewolf. Cormac hopes that Kitty can help Ben through the horrible first days and weeks and the first "change" at the full moon. Cormac and Ben have been best friends since childhood and at one time gave a promise to each other to kill the other if they ever were to become a lycanthrope. Cormac couldn't follow through on that promise and Ben is angry, but the situation is complicated by the fact that there was "something else" working with the wolf who bit Ben that got away, and Cormac is determined to hunt it down. While longing for some solitude, Kitty is happy to help Ben but then finds that the neighbors are not so keen on having a werewolf next door and Kitty begins receiving threats, dead animals on her doorstep and some kind of odd curse with barbed-wire crosses strewn around her cabin--and then Cormac's 'evil thing' shows up and makes itself known, but the hostile sheriff thinks Kitty is behind some attacks on cattle some few miles away. Things take a romantic twist (of course!) but it was well-done and not off-putting to me like some romantic side plots can be, so I'll definitely keep reading the series. Enjoyable, quick read. A.
14. MISTER MONDAY by Garth Nix. (AUDIO) #1 in the "Keys to the Kingdom" young adult fantasy series. Young Arthur Penhaligon,during the throes of an asthma attack in gym class, comes close to death before help is summoned, and has what he thinks is a
hallucination, being given a piece of metal and told it is a Key. When he takes this key, his asthma all but disappears and he feels verywell--and the person (Mister Monday) who gave him the key now wants it back. But Arthur is warned to not let him have it and told that he is the heir apparent to the Key, which is part of the Will and is suddenly drawn into a strange world inside an invisible house that only
he can see. He willingly goes into this house when a devastating plague strikes his city and he receives a clue that the cure can be found inside--and as a plague killed his real parents when he was but a baby, he is determined that his adoptive parents will not suffer the same fate. Once inside, he finds out that he is in a house that defies space and time and that it's inhabited by Denizens, who are creatures created by the house itself, and by the children who followed the fabled Pied Piper into it (from the real world, which are called The Secondary Realms) and have become immortal slaves of the House. As he travels through the strange world of the House, he meets various characters--some in the employ of Mister Monday that he flees from, and others who work to help him figure out what to do--and hopefully come up with the plague cure, too. While this book had an interesting premise and a good reader, I did occasionally find my mind wandering and it didn't hold me spellbound as some audio books do. That might be due to being distracted by other things, and I did feel that it's a good start to a series that encompasses all seven days of the week, and I presume Arthur will have to navigate through each of those (the namesake of each day has a Key that is one of the seven fragments of the Will) so that he's able to save the world. LOL Will definitely listen on! B+.
15. HALF THE BLOOD OF BROOKLYN by Charlie Huston. #3 Joe Pitt paranormal noir mystery. Joe is a vampire, infected with the Vyrus, and now is the head of security for one of the vampire gangs that control New York. Gone is his carefree life as a Rogue, answering only to himself--but also gone is the constant scrabbling for a living, for having a decent supply of blood. Terry, his boss and the head of the Society clan, is trying to keep the balance between the clans (and maybe expand his membership a bit) and asks Joe to protect Lydia (his assistant) in a meeting across the bridge with the boss of a small clan they hope to annex. Joe is distracted because his girlfriend Evie who has AIDS, is in hospital and failing rapidly. He has been trying to decide if he should just infect her with the Vyrus (which will kill her instantly or cure her AIDS) and make her a vampire--something he sees as a horrid last resort--or let her die. Evie doesn't even know he's a vampire at this point, so he can't even offer her the choice! There is also a strange "Van Helsing" (vampire slayer) at work, who knows his stuff, and Joe is trying to figure that into the current happenings as well. At any rate, when they head across the bridge into Brooklyn, there's big trouble waiting in the form of a previously hidden clan of Jewish vampires, who are much more powerful than Joe or anyone anticipated, and he learns that all is not what it seems and his loyalties--such as they are--are tested
again and he has some major decisions to make. Some of those decisions are made for him, and he's not crazy about the choices that were made. Dark, gloomy, violent and abrasive and without an ounce of goodness and light, this book is typical Charlie Huston fare, and propels Joe Pitt down the same bloody path he's been wandering for decades, only at a faster pace. Plenty of plot twists and turns to turn up the odd surprise and with enough issues unresolved that you know you have to read the next installment to find out what happens. This book (and series) is great for what it is, but I couldn't thrive on a continual diet of this doom and gloom. A.
16. THE WATER ROOM by Christopher Fowler. #2 Bryant and May mystery, featuring our two elderly policemen and the entire PCU (Peculiar Crimes Unit) in London. The unit is finally ready to move into their refurbished quarters after the fire that destroyed nearly everything at the end of the first book in the series. Bryant and May, both fearing that their boss is going dissolve their unit at the drop of a hat, are determined to keep themselves and their subordinates busy. They begin to investigate cases brought to them by friends or acquaintances, and find that their cases begin to intersect with the hidden rivers of London as their common ground. Ruth Singh, an elderly woman of Indian descent, is found dead by her brother--sitting in a chair in her basement looking as though she's ready to go out to do the weekly shopping. She's totally dry, but autopsy reveals that she has Thames water--in her mouth and esophagus, but she didn't drown--she asphyxiated from laryngospasm. But how did the water get there?? Bryant is certain foul play is involved and sets out obsessively to prove it. May undertakes a favor for an old lover who has become concerned that her museum curator husband has started doing something illegal that will get them into trouble with the law--he's meeting a known dodgy character in areas that deal with old riverbeds under London's streets, and for the life of them, Bryant & May cannot think of what his interest might be or what they are up to. I enjoyed this book even more than I did the first one--it's not often you have detectives worrying about seeds under their dentures or chest pains when going up several flights of stairs. Both eccentric in different ways, these two lead their younger colleagues into thinking outside the box to solve these odd cases. The prose is very descriptive and the author has a wonderful way with words and phraseology. I had to look up a few words that I'd never heard of before--which always makes me happy. And I didn't figure the mystery out, either. Wonderful stuff, and I will definitely not be waiting too long to get to the next in series! A+
17. FOUR AND TWENTY BLACKBIRDS by Cherie Priest. First book in the Eden Moore trilogy--not sure how to classify it. Sort of Southern gothic horror paranormal mystery ghost story? LOL Eden Moore is a young mixed-race woman who's seen ghosts ever since she was a young girl. Her childhood and parentage are shrouded in mystery, her mother having died in a home for troubled teenagers during Eden's birth, her father's identity unknown. Lovingly raised by her Aunt Lulu and Uncle Dave near Chattanooga, Tennessee, they give her everything she needs except the answers to questions about her past. She was attacked by a religious nut when she's just a young girl, and is spared from death because the three sisters (her ghosts) warn her that he's coming. Later, Eden learns that Malachi is a relative who thinks she's the reincarnation of an evil person from generations back in their family tree. As a young woman, Eden sets out to find the answers that Lulu refuses to give her, which leads her on a trail of horror, danger, and pure evil as she travels from Tennessee to Georgia and then the swamplands of Florida as she tries to work out who to trust and what to do next. Steeped in Southern mythology, this ghost story grabbed me in from the first page and wouldn't let me go. While the plotting seems a bit wobbly at times and all the ghosts, ancestors and their relationships are sometimes confusing (there's some inbreeding and I'm still not sure of a couple of the ties) Eden's character grows during the course of the book and by the end, I've come to like her very much. The ending is a bit anti-climactic but there are hints of stories yet untold which I presume will be unfolded in the other two books in the series. I'm glad I've already got them or I'd have to go hunting them down! A-.
18. CHINA TRADE by S.J. Rozan #1 Lydia Chin and Bill Smith mystery set in New York's Chinatown. Lydia Chin is a 20-something private investigator. She's also Chinese-American with a large family including a mother and several brothers who would like nothing better than for her to be a traditional woman--meaning to marry and learn her "place" and stop bringing disgrace to the family. But Lydia is not so inclined. In this first entry in the series, a friend who runs a small Chinese museum called Chinese Pride hires her to find some porcelains that were recently donated to the museum by the widow of a collector--only two crates of the newest additions were stolen from their basement. Because they don't want word to get out that they can't properly safeguard donations, they hire Lydia rather than contact the police. Lydia works with a sometime partner, another PI, "older white guy" Bill Smith, and she calls him in on this case. They seem to have a sort of semi-romantic relationship--Lydia is reluctant to get involved with him because of her family, and Bill obviously cares for Lydia but is content to just bide his time, at least for now. They begin investigating this case by trying to hear of any word on the street and consulting other museums and some of Bill's contacts (read: fences) to try to locate the porcelains. A complicated tale involving rival museums/porcelain collectors, a ghost from Lydia's past, import-export dealers, the unsavory leaders of a couple of local Chinese gangs, and Lydia's best friend Mary, a police detective. Great first entry in the series! This isn't really a 'cozy' mystery, but it isn't real hard-boiled either. I like Lydia and her independent spirit a lot. Bill is less well-fleshed in this book, but I understand that Rozan alternates between their two points of view in each book, so I'm assuming we'll get to know him better next time. (Interesting concept, by the way!) I liked the details about Chinese-American culture and values and the writing style was relaxed and easy to read. I'm impressed enough that I've already ordered books 2 and 3 from PBS. A.
19. THE COLLABORATOR OF BETHLEHEM by Matt Beynon Rees. #1 Omar Yussef mystery set in Bethlehem, Israel. Omar Yussef is a fifty-six-year-old history teacher, an alcoholic who's been dry for ten years. Obviously not a devout Muslim, he does the best he can in an ever-changing, violent world to teach his students right from wrong and respect for all. When one of his former students, George Saba, is accused of being a collaborator with the Israelites and murdering one of the local heros, Omar takes a leave of absence from his school and sets out to investigate so he can prove his friend's innocence. Of course, he's been living too long with his head in an idealistic cloud, and in reality, those in power need a scapegoat and since they hold all the cards, they thwart Omar Yussef's efforts at every turn. After awhile, he isn't even sure that people he's considered close friends and confidantes (including the head of the police in Bethlehem) for many years aren't pulling strings against him. Does he take the easy way out and go with the flow to keep his family safe, or does he soldier on in the name of what he believes is right? Probably not a dilemma many of us can identify with on a very real and visceral level. Despite being in a setting that is brand new to me, with lots of interesting cultural details, one thing the book shows is that humans are human wherever you go--and motives for murder like power and greed cross national, religious and cultural borders. Very interesting first entry in series. It's difficult to read about an area of the world that has existed as a war-torn scrap of land for so very long, but I am always glad to learn about new areas and cultures. I did figure the mystery out ahead of time, but it was just a good guess or my gut feeling--I felt like I was on shaky ground being so unfamiliar with the culture and missed a lot of clues, I think, and sometimes had to stop to rearrange my thoughts. I liked Omar despite his sometimes petty vanity and stubbornness and I look forward to getting to know him better. B+.
20. THE YIDDISH POLICEMAN'S UNION by Michael Chabon. (AUDIO) Set in modern-day Sitka, Alaska, but in a modern world changed inexorably by an alternative history--one in which, during WWII, Berlin was nuked, where Jews are resettled in Sitka (a proposal FDR actually put forth but which went nowhere in "our" world) as a temporary homeland--whose lease is now about to expire and which will leave "the frozen Chosen" in limbo. With reversion imminent, Sitka detective Meyer Landsman, a bit of a drunken rogue, is awakened to a call that someone in his own building (a flea-bitten hotel) has been murdered. Divorced for several years, Landsman discovers that his ex-wife (also a cop) Bina Gelbfish is back in town and is now his superior officer. As they attempt to piece together who killed the heroin addict who was Landsman's neighbor, they discover that the dead man is actually the once-loved son of the local head of the Verbover Jewish sect, who was rumored at one time to be a possible messiah. The story quickly becomes much more complicated than a simple murder investigation--soon there are conspiracies between the Jewish gangs, the leaders of the reversion committee, even the US Government! I love Chabon's writing style, and the premise for the book is certainly interesting. The plot, however, becomes a bit tangled along the way, and at least in the audio version, a bit confusing at times with a prodigious number of characters and some shifting back and forth in time that wasn't always easy to keep straight. Still, a great, winding story with a scope that defies genre classification, being part noir murder mystery, part speculative fiction, part social commentary, part literary novel. And does that blending very well. A.
Cheryl
2. EATERS OF THE DEAD by Michael Crichton. (AUDIO) Narrated by the incomparable George Guidall, I figured I would finally investigate the book behind one of my favorite movies of all time (The 13th Warrior.) This is one case where the movie outshines the book. It's not that it's a bad book, it's just rather dry, being a slight dramatization, Crichton's take on a real historical document, a journal kept by one Ahmad ibn Fadlan of his travels as an ambassador from the Caliph of Baghdad to the Volga Bulgars. On the way, he was sidetracked and ended up on adventures with a band of Vikings, going deep into their cold north lands and seeing many things that were an affront to him and his Muslim religion; this took place in the 10th century. As a journal meant to relay facts, it was somewhat of a recitation (we saw this, we did that, we spent this many days here and traveled that many days until the next stop...and the phrase "I saw this with my own eyes" was used a lot, too.) While Crichton obviously embellished and made it more interesting than it probably was in reality, there were a lot of asides and footnotes, which the reader did very well, using different tones of voice to indicate a further explanation which was not a part of Fadlan's actual journal. It was a good listen, especially because of Guidall's reading. There were some differences between the movie and the book, but the basic premise was the same. B.
3. A COTSWOLD KILLING by Rebecca Tope. #1 Thea Osborne mystery, set in (duh!) the Cotswolds. Thea is a forty-something year-old recently widowed house sitter--a brand new house sitter on her first job minding the home of Clive and Jennifer Reynolds while they are on a Caribbean holiday. On the first full day of her occupation, she discovers a dead body in the pond on the Reynolds' property, which considerably livens up what promised to be a rather dull three weeks following Clive's extensive "do this and that" lists. Thea's brother-in-law is a Chief Inspector in another area but has apparently been "looking into" some sort of fishy business in that area and although he won't elaborate, Thea wonders if this death has something to do with James's investigation. There is an odd cast of villagers, and definitely something 'weird' about many of them, and with Thea not knowing them or the history of the interactions there, it's all that much more difficult to know what's going on. I have to admit I was somewhat disappointed with this book; it was disjointed and not really cohesive. I couldn't get a good sense of who Thea was as a person, and her actions were often very contradictory from one minute to the next. It wasn't really bad, just sort of... "meh" I guess. This series of books has been hard to come by--I've had the second and third books on my wishlist at PBS for about a year and a half and have only moved up one spot on one of the books. My library doesn't have them either, so being that I was not bowled over with excellence in this opening entry, I think I will delete them from my WL and relegate this series to one of those I'm choosing not to pursue. C.
4. DEATH OF A COZY WRITER by G.M. Malliet. #1 St. Just mystery. Adrian Beauclerk-Fisk is a writer of cozy British mysteries, and he's also an absolute beast. Pompous, phony, and cruel to his family, frequently changing his will in favor of whichever of his children has momentarily pleased him (or displeased him the least), he decides to have some real fun by inviting his four children to his wedding. They are aghast of course, seeing a threat to their inheritances, but they all head toward his manor, figuratively attempting to elbow their way into his favor and hopefully talk him out of this marriage to an obvious gold digger. (It takes one to know one!) Then Sir Adrian drops the bombshell that his marriage is a done deal, that he and Violet are already man and wife and that his will has (yet again) been changed--but he doesn't say how. Shortly thereafter, Sir Adrian's eldest child Ruthven is brutally murdered, and it's not long before he follows his son to the afterlife. Just about everyone has motive to kill one or another of them, so who dunnit? I admit that I was surprised by the ending, but to be honest, I didn't much care by that point. The book started very slowly, and I nearly gave it up since by the time I hit page 100 (1/3 of the way through the book) there had not yet been a murder, nor had we met DCI St. Just, our intrepid hero. There was just too much set-up, and in reflecting back, the set-up didn't really give many clues to the murderer. Once St. Just entered the scene, things did improve. I like him, and Sgt. Fear too, and wish that his character had been more developed. There is some wry humor that I found amusing, but the overall package of this book was just mediocre to me. I will likely read the next one, but I've deleted it from my wishlist and just added it to my library list. If St. Just develops further in that book I would say the series has promise. C+
5. THE RAVENS OF BLACKWATER by Edward Marston. #2 in the Domesday medieval mysteries, featuring Gervase Bret and Ralph Delchard and their cohorts Canon Hubert and Brother Simon, who travel around England at the behest of King William the Conqueror. The year is 1086, and the mission of our motley crew is to compile a so-called Domesday Book, in which every person and their lands are catalogued--and of course, appropriately taxed. They investigate cases of fraud, where landholders bilk other people out of their rightful property on the sly and in doing so avoid paying the taxes owed the King. In this case, they are off to Blackwater Hall near the town of Maldon in Essex. The local lord, Hamo FitzCorbucion, has apparently been stealing lands for years and several have finally complained, despite the risk of being killed for speaking out. Upon arrival, Gervase and Ralph learn that Hamo is out of the country and his eldest son Guy has just been brutally slain. Gervase, a lawyer, becomes interested in the case and they come to the conclusion that the murder is indeed related to their land-grab investigation, and thus they stay to get it all sorted out. This is only the second in the series, but already I think it will become one of my favorites. Gervase and Ralph are two very different characters--Gervase being a gentle soul who is betrothed to his beloved Alys and chaste, Ralph being a Knight who fought in King William's battles to conquer England and a man of lusty appetites. While this does occasionally cause some conflict, the two genuinely like each other and are friends, so it works well. The two clerics who travel with them round off the foursome, and the secondary characters are also interesting and well-drawn. The mysteries are also well-done, with plenty of clues dropped along the way, including some enticing red herrings that always seem to lead me astray to the wrong conclusion. I'm not often surprised anymore, so that's always a treat. I did figure out part of this one but not until very close to the end. Well done and looking forward to more! A+
6. DRANGONSINGER by Anne McCaffrey (AUDIO) #2 Harper Hall trilogy in the Pern series. This book continues where the first in this trilogy-within-a-huge-series left off, with fifteen-year-old Menolly, formerly of Half-Circle Sea Hold, now at the Harper Hall, where musicians are trained. The book chronicles her first week in the Hall, her wonderment and awe at how her music-making is not only welcomed but encouraged--at Half-Circle, girls were not allowed to become Harpers, so she was actually beaten for writing music and singing her tunes! It tells of the adjustment of those in the Hall to her, and more pointedly, to her nine fire lizards, which had previously been thought to be naught but mythical creatures. There are friendships made, and enemies acquired as well--as there are bound to be jealousies when someone has as much natural talent as Menolly. It is a week of huge changes and adjustment for Menolly, and it was a delight to have this reader (Sally Darling) take us through all those highs and lows. I am particularly enjoying this trilogy within the greater Pern series and hope that even after it has been completed, we will return to Menolly's story at some point later on. A+
7. WIFE OF THE GODS by Kwei Quartey. Debut novel (not sure if it is an intended series or not) featuring Detective Inspector Darko Dawson in Accra, the major city in Ghana, Africa. Dawson is off to a small village near the city of Ho in the Volta region when a young medical student is found murdered in the forest. Gladys Mensah was an outspoken young medical student who volunteered much of her time educating neighboring villages about HIV and prevention. She was also outspoken against trokosi, or ritual enslavement of women by so-called fetish priests. Were one of these activities what got Gladys killed, or was it something personal? Though she seemed to be universally loved by all who knew her, the suspect list is by no means short. Darko is called in from Accra (bypassing Ho CID) when some political pressure is brought to bear. He's suited to the task as he speaks Ewe, the regional dialect, and he has family in the area--an aunt and uncle whom he hasn't seen since he was a child, when his mother disappeared. The mystery of his mother's disappearance is also brought into the present-day investigation. I really enjoyed this book--it was from a culture that I know little about which always sparks my interest. I had mixed feelings about Darko--though I liked him, he had a problem with rage that he didn't seem to be able to handle well, which was more than a little disturbing in some instances. The writing style was fluid and easy to read. The only downfall really is that the plot was so transparent. I did figure the mystery out very early on (both of them, actually!) but I do that a lot, so it didn't lower my appreciation for the book as a whole very much. I hope the author continues with more Darko Dawson books--I would definitely look for them and would like to hear more about what happens with Darko, his wife Christine and their son Hosiah. While I enjoy Alexander McCall Smith's series set in Botswana, it's nice to have a flip side to Mma Ramotswe's Africa, a darker and more realistic side. Well-done first book! B+
8. FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES by Donna Leon. #9 Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery set in Venice, Italy. Guido gets a big surprise one lazy Saturday morning when Franco Rossi, an official from the housing commission pays him a visit to essentially tell him that his apartment doesn't exist. In reviewing and reconciling building permits and architectural plans, it seems his downstairs neighbor has the top floor of his apartment building and any permits and building done after that is null and void. Rossi tells him the commission will be in touch, but it's several weeks later when Guido hears from the man again--this time, Rossi makes a call stating that he hadn't realized at the time of the visit that Guido was a policeman and now there is something fishy going on at his office that he wants to talk to him about. He's calling from a cell phone which Guido says isn't secure and asks him to call back from a public pay phone. Rossi never calls and Guido discovers that he is in a coma in hospital from a fall, but never regains conciousness and dies. Meanwhile, Vice-Questore Patta's son is nicked on a drugs charge while at University and Patta asks Guido to use his network of contacts to keep it out of the papers. As is often the case with this series, there isn't really a hard and fast solution to the crime and justice seems a bit nebulous. But I enjoy them to the hilt. With the wonderful characters and setting, a visit to Brunetti's Venice always throws me thoroughly into another culture. A
9. A BEAUTIFUL PLACE TO DIE by Malla Nunn (AUDIO) A powerful book set in 1952 South Africa, when apartheid was just 'ramping up' and the laws that separated and regulated race were newly enacted. DS Emmanuel Cooper is sent from Johannesburg CID to investigate the murder of a white policeman near the village of Jacob's Rest. Captain Willem Pretorius, an Afrikaner with an impeccable reputation is found in the river, shot twice. The whole town is grieving--particularly his sons--large, brutish louts certain of their rightful place in the world and their God-given right to wreak retribution on whoever killed their Pa. Certain that this heinous crime had to be committed by someone passing through, probably a native African or "colored" (mixed race) person, the family attempt to shanghai Cooper's investigation, which is already compromised because those of the "lesser classes" are very reluctant to speak out against anyone of the ruling Afrikaner class. When the Security Branch of the government moves in and begins attempting to tie Pretorius' murder to a Communist plot, Cooper is essentially shoved aside and assigned to working on a series of attacks and rapes of colored women in the year previous to Pretorius' death--which, that case being of little import to anyone in power, is a real slap in the face. During that investigation, he continues to glean information with the help of Constable Shabalala, Pretorius' Zulu co-worker, about Captain Pretorius that shows him that despite the public show of grief, there are many people who are relieved that he is dead and that the town leader was not as spotless as believed. Shabalala remains rather reticent about his longtime friend, yet always stands behind Cooper in his investigation.This was a great book--I can't say I always enjoyed it per se, as there are a lot of unsettling and unpleasant parts to it, things to make ones blood boil, but the author strives for the mood and realistic setting for how things were at the time. The reader (Saul Reichlin) was excellent, handling many different accents and voices very well. The plot was rather complicated with several sub-plots that were almost more interesting than the murder mystery itself. Parts of the mysteries I figured out well in advance but not the actual "whodunit" itself. Excellent--not sure if this will become a series with Cooper featured in more books, but if it is, I will definitely be seeking them. A+
10. MURDER IN LITTLE ITALY by Victoria Thompson. "Gaslight" historical mystery #8 set in early 1900's New York with widowed midwife Sarah Brandt and Detective Frank Malloy. Summoned to the Ruocco home above their Italian restaurant in Little Italy to help deliver a baby, Sarah Brandt soon finds trouble on her hands when the size of the baby points out obviously that Antonio Ruocco could not possibly be the baby's father--even allowing for the fact that Nainsi O'Hara was pregnant when they married, they were expecting a seven-month baby instead of the full-term plus size baby she delivered. Nainsi's mother-in-law, Patrizia, matriarch of the famity, wants
her to take the bastard baby and go. Sarah convinces her to let Nainsi stay until she's recovered, but she returns the following morning to check on her patient only to find her dead. Nainsi's mother, arriving a short time later, begins screaming that the Italian family killed her daughter, and insists the police be called. Thus Sarah ends up working again with Frank Malloy, who has been directed by Commissioner Teddy Roosevelt (a friend of Sarah's prominent family) to solve this crime and fast as the death sparks a series of riots between Italian and Irish gangs and threatens to rip the city of New York apart. This was a light, enjoyable read, typical of the series with a mystery that wasn't too hard to figure out but a nice visit with "old friends" in the form of the main characters. There was some interesting details about the political machinations of the gangs and the rampant corruption in the city at that time. Looking forward to the next one. A.
11. DEATH'S HALF-ACRE by Margaret Maron. (AUDIO) #14 Judge Deborah Knott mystery, narrated by C.J. Critt. Spring has arrived in Colleton County, North Carolina and once again the debate as to whether to develop and build or to preserve and protect the countryside ramps up. Many issues are being hotly debated among friends, family and colleagues of Judge Knott, and the County Commissioners have their plates full. When the head of the Commission turns up missing for an important meeting and then later is found dead of an apparent suicide--with a letter implicating herself and vaguely hinting at impropriety of others--everyone who knew Candace Bradshaw
is surprised. Not necessarily that the ambitious woman might have been doing some shady deals, but that she would kill herself over it. Sure enough, a couple of days later, Deborah's husband deputy sheriff Dwight Bryant learns from the coroner that Candace was murdered, and with a list of suspects as long as your arm, it's not going to be easy to narrow it down. Of course Deborah tries to remain cool and uninterested but her curiosity gets the better of her and soon she is in the thick of things. Meanwhile, Deborah spots her octogenarian father Kezzie having a very expensive pair of earrings appraised and wonders what he's got up his sleeve--but knows better than to ask outright. Let's just say that her old Daddy is just as sharp as he ever was and a bit of the rogue con man comes to the surface in his caper. A very enjoyable trip down south with Deborah and her very large extended family, as always. I spotted the killer very early on, but it was just that old gut instinct kicking in--there were several times I doubted my proclamation but at the end I was right after all. I'm all caught up with this series now--although the next one comes out in August. A
12. WARBREAKER by Brandon Sanderson. This is a stand-alone fantasy novel, one in which the author creates a totally unique world, a world where things don't quite work as we know them, a world with BioChromatic Breath--which is used almost like currency. Don't have it, and you're a Drab. Have enough and you're practically a God. This is several stories within a story, woven skillfully together into a cohesive epic tale that grabs hold of you and won't let you put the book down. Siri is the third (read: unimportant) daughter of the King of Idris and is shocked when her father sends her to Hallandren to wed the God-King Susebron instead of her older sister Vivenna, who has been groomed for just that position her entire life. Vivenna decides to attempt to rescue her sister, whom she feels must be totally out of her element and miserable, and in doing so breaks out of her 'perfect, compliant daughter' mode and hooks up with a band of mercenaries who had been helping one of her father's spies in Hallandren. Lightbringer, one of the Returned Gods of Hallandren, begins having flashes of memory of his previous life--do these visions relate to present day as prophecy or are they just memories? And who are (or were) Vasher and Denth, opposing each other in an effort to start (or stop?) a war? A tale of two very differing religions and countries, with lifestyles and beliefs that are miles apart, headed towards what seems an inevitable war. Political and religious intrigue, dark magic, and a whole host of people who are not who or what they seem, combine together with Sanderson's easy reading style to make this an excellent read. He writes in such a way that you care about all the characters, even though they are on opposing sides and are very different people. This was the first Sanderson book I've read, and I can assure you it won't be the last. A+
13. KITTY TAKES A HOLIDAY by Carrie Vaughn. #3 Kitty Norville paranormal mystery. Kitty has decided to take a break from hosting her supernatural talk show, The Midnight Hour, and heads for the hills (an isolated cabin in the mountains) to work on writing a book she's contracted for to share her life and experiences since becoming a werewolf four years previously. She's not making much progress, but her efforts are interrupted by the appearance of werewolf-hunter Cormac with her friend and lawyer Ben O'Farrell, who has been bitten and is now also a werewolf. Cormac hopes that Kitty can help Ben through the horrible first days and weeks and the first "change" at the full moon. Cormac and Ben have been best friends since childhood and at one time gave a promise to each other to kill the other if they ever were to become a lycanthrope. Cormac couldn't follow through on that promise and Ben is angry, but the situation is complicated by the fact that there was "something else" working with the wolf who bit Ben that got away, and Cormac is determined to hunt it down. While longing for some solitude, Kitty is happy to help Ben but then finds that the neighbors are not so keen on having a werewolf next door and Kitty begins receiving threats, dead animals on her doorstep and some kind of odd curse with barbed-wire crosses strewn around her cabin--and then Cormac's 'evil thing' shows up and makes itself known, but the hostile sheriff thinks Kitty is behind some attacks on cattle some few miles away. Things take a romantic twist (of course!) but it was well-done and not off-putting to me like some romantic side plots can be, so I'll definitely keep reading the series. Enjoyable, quick read. A.
14. MISTER MONDAY by Garth Nix. (AUDIO) #1 in the "Keys to the Kingdom" young adult fantasy series. Young Arthur Penhaligon,during the throes of an asthma attack in gym class, comes close to death before help is summoned, and has what he thinks is a
hallucination, being given a piece of metal and told it is a Key. When he takes this key, his asthma all but disappears and he feels verywell--and the person (Mister Monday) who gave him the key now wants it back. But Arthur is warned to not let him have it and told that he is the heir apparent to the Key, which is part of the Will and is suddenly drawn into a strange world inside an invisible house that only
he can see. He willingly goes into this house when a devastating plague strikes his city and he receives a clue that the cure can be found inside--and as a plague killed his real parents when he was but a baby, he is determined that his adoptive parents will not suffer the same fate. Once inside, he finds out that he is in a house that defies space and time and that it's inhabited by Denizens, who are creatures created by the house itself, and by the children who followed the fabled Pied Piper into it (from the real world, which are called The Secondary Realms) and have become immortal slaves of the House. As he travels through the strange world of the House, he meets various characters--some in the employ of Mister Monday that he flees from, and others who work to help him figure out what to do--and hopefully come up with the plague cure, too. While this book had an interesting premise and a good reader, I did occasionally find my mind wandering and it didn't hold me spellbound as some audio books do. That might be due to being distracted by other things, and I did feel that it's a good start to a series that encompasses all seven days of the week, and I presume Arthur will have to navigate through each of those (the namesake of each day has a Key that is one of the seven fragments of the Will) so that he's able to save the world. LOL Will definitely listen on! B+.
15. HALF THE BLOOD OF BROOKLYN by Charlie Huston. #3 Joe Pitt paranormal noir mystery. Joe is a vampire, infected with the Vyrus, and now is the head of security for one of the vampire gangs that control New York. Gone is his carefree life as a Rogue, answering only to himself--but also gone is the constant scrabbling for a living, for having a decent supply of blood. Terry, his boss and the head of the Society clan, is trying to keep the balance between the clans (and maybe expand his membership a bit) and asks Joe to protect Lydia (his assistant) in a meeting across the bridge with the boss of a small clan they hope to annex. Joe is distracted because his girlfriend Evie who has AIDS, is in hospital and failing rapidly. He has been trying to decide if he should just infect her with the Vyrus (which will kill her instantly or cure her AIDS) and make her a vampire--something he sees as a horrid last resort--or let her die. Evie doesn't even know he's a vampire at this point, so he can't even offer her the choice! There is also a strange "Van Helsing" (vampire slayer) at work, who knows his stuff, and Joe is trying to figure that into the current happenings as well. At any rate, when they head across the bridge into Brooklyn, there's big trouble waiting in the form of a previously hidden clan of Jewish vampires, who are much more powerful than Joe or anyone anticipated, and he learns that all is not what it seems and his loyalties--such as they are--are tested
again and he has some major decisions to make. Some of those decisions are made for him, and he's not crazy about the choices that were made. Dark, gloomy, violent and abrasive and without an ounce of goodness and light, this book is typical Charlie Huston fare, and propels Joe Pitt down the same bloody path he's been wandering for decades, only at a faster pace. Plenty of plot twists and turns to turn up the odd surprise and with enough issues unresolved that you know you have to read the next installment to find out what happens. This book (and series) is great for what it is, but I couldn't thrive on a continual diet of this doom and gloom. A.
16. THE WATER ROOM by Christopher Fowler. #2 Bryant and May mystery, featuring our two elderly policemen and the entire PCU (Peculiar Crimes Unit) in London. The unit is finally ready to move into their refurbished quarters after the fire that destroyed nearly everything at the end of the first book in the series. Bryant and May, both fearing that their boss is going dissolve their unit at the drop of a hat, are determined to keep themselves and their subordinates busy. They begin to investigate cases brought to them by friends or acquaintances, and find that their cases begin to intersect with the hidden rivers of London as their common ground. Ruth Singh, an elderly woman of Indian descent, is found dead by her brother--sitting in a chair in her basement looking as though she's ready to go out to do the weekly shopping. She's totally dry, but autopsy reveals that she has Thames water--in her mouth and esophagus, but she didn't drown--she asphyxiated from laryngospasm. But how did the water get there?? Bryant is certain foul play is involved and sets out obsessively to prove it. May undertakes a favor for an old lover who has become concerned that her museum curator husband has started doing something illegal that will get them into trouble with the law--he's meeting a known dodgy character in areas that deal with old riverbeds under London's streets, and for the life of them, Bryant & May cannot think of what his interest might be or what they are up to. I enjoyed this book even more than I did the first one--it's not often you have detectives worrying about seeds under their dentures or chest pains when going up several flights of stairs. Both eccentric in different ways, these two lead their younger colleagues into thinking outside the box to solve these odd cases. The prose is very descriptive and the author has a wonderful way with words and phraseology. I had to look up a few words that I'd never heard of before--which always makes me happy. And I didn't figure the mystery out, either. Wonderful stuff, and I will definitely not be waiting too long to get to the next in series! A+
17. FOUR AND TWENTY BLACKBIRDS by Cherie Priest. First book in the Eden Moore trilogy--not sure how to classify it. Sort of Southern gothic horror paranormal mystery ghost story? LOL Eden Moore is a young mixed-race woman who's seen ghosts ever since she was a young girl. Her childhood and parentage are shrouded in mystery, her mother having died in a home for troubled teenagers during Eden's birth, her father's identity unknown. Lovingly raised by her Aunt Lulu and Uncle Dave near Chattanooga, Tennessee, they give her everything she needs except the answers to questions about her past. She was attacked by a religious nut when she's just a young girl, and is spared from death because the three sisters (her ghosts) warn her that he's coming. Later, Eden learns that Malachi is a relative who thinks she's the reincarnation of an evil person from generations back in their family tree. As a young woman, Eden sets out to find the answers that Lulu refuses to give her, which leads her on a trail of horror, danger, and pure evil as she travels from Tennessee to Georgia and then the swamplands of Florida as she tries to work out who to trust and what to do next. Steeped in Southern mythology, this ghost story grabbed me in from the first page and wouldn't let me go. While the plotting seems a bit wobbly at times and all the ghosts, ancestors and their relationships are sometimes confusing (there's some inbreeding and I'm still not sure of a couple of the ties) Eden's character grows during the course of the book and by the end, I've come to like her very much. The ending is a bit anti-climactic but there are hints of stories yet untold which I presume will be unfolded in the other two books in the series. I'm glad I've already got them or I'd have to go hunting them down! A-.
18. CHINA TRADE by S.J. Rozan #1 Lydia Chin and Bill Smith mystery set in New York's Chinatown. Lydia Chin is a 20-something private investigator. She's also Chinese-American with a large family including a mother and several brothers who would like nothing better than for her to be a traditional woman--meaning to marry and learn her "place" and stop bringing disgrace to the family. But Lydia is not so inclined. In this first entry in the series, a friend who runs a small Chinese museum called Chinese Pride hires her to find some porcelains that were recently donated to the museum by the widow of a collector--only two crates of the newest additions were stolen from their basement. Because they don't want word to get out that they can't properly safeguard donations, they hire Lydia rather than contact the police. Lydia works with a sometime partner, another PI, "older white guy" Bill Smith, and she calls him in on this case. They seem to have a sort of semi-romantic relationship--Lydia is reluctant to get involved with him because of her family, and Bill obviously cares for Lydia but is content to just bide his time, at least for now. They begin investigating this case by trying to hear of any word on the street and consulting other museums and some of Bill's contacts (read: fences) to try to locate the porcelains. A complicated tale involving rival museums/porcelain collectors, a ghost from Lydia's past, import-export dealers, the unsavory leaders of a couple of local Chinese gangs, and Lydia's best friend Mary, a police detective. Great first entry in the series! This isn't really a 'cozy' mystery, but it isn't real hard-boiled either. I like Lydia and her independent spirit a lot. Bill is less well-fleshed in this book, but I understand that Rozan alternates between their two points of view in each book, so I'm assuming we'll get to know him better next time. (Interesting concept, by the way!) I liked the details about Chinese-American culture and values and the writing style was relaxed and easy to read. I'm impressed enough that I've already ordered books 2 and 3 from PBS. A.
19. THE COLLABORATOR OF BETHLEHEM by Matt Beynon Rees. #1 Omar Yussef mystery set in Bethlehem, Israel. Omar Yussef is a fifty-six-year-old history teacher, an alcoholic who's been dry for ten years. Obviously not a devout Muslim, he does the best he can in an ever-changing, violent world to teach his students right from wrong and respect for all. When one of his former students, George Saba, is accused of being a collaborator with the Israelites and murdering one of the local heros, Omar takes a leave of absence from his school and sets out to investigate so he can prove his friend's innocence. Of course, he's been living too long with his head in an idealistic cloud, and in reality, those in power need a scapegoat and since they hold all the cards, they thwart Omar Yussef's efforts at every turn. After awhile, he isn't even sure that people he's considered close friends and confidantes (including the head of the police in Bethlehem) for many years aren't pulling strings against him. Does he take the easy way out and go with the flow to keep his family safe, or does he soldier on in the name of what he believes is right? Probably not a dilemma many of us can identify with on a very real and visceral level. Despite being in a setting that is brand new to me, with lots of interesting cultural details, one thing the book shows is that humans are human wherever you go--and motives for murder like power and greed cross national, religious and cultural borders. Very interesting first entry in series. It's difficult to read about an area of the world that has existed as a war-torn scrap of land for so very long, but I am always glad to learn about new areas and cultures. I did figure the mystery out ahead of time, but it was just a good guess or my gut feeling--I felt like I was on shaky ground being so unfamiliar with the culture and missed a lot of clues, I think, and sometimes had to stop to rearrange my thoughts. I liked Omar despite his sometimes petty vanity and stubbornness and I look forward to getting to know him better. B+.
20. THE YIDDISH POLICEMAN'S UNION by Michael Chabon. (AUDIO) Set in modern-day Sitka, Alaska, but in a modern world changed inexorably by an alternative history--one in which, during WWII, Berlin was nuked, where Jews are resettled in Sitka (a proposal FDR actually put forth but which went nowhere in "our" world) as a temporary homeland--whose lease is now about to expire and which will leave "the frozen Chosen" in limbo. With reversion imminent, Sitka detective Meyer Landsman, a bit of a drunken rogue, is awakened to a call that someone in his own building (a flea-bitten hotel) has been murdered. Divorced for several years, Landsman discovers that his ex-wife (also a cop) Bina Gelbfish is back in town and is now his superior officer. As they attempt to piece together who killed the heroin addict who was Landsman's neighbor, they discover that the dead man is actually the once-loved son of the local head of the Verbover Jewish sect, who was rumored at one time to be a possible messiah. The story quickly becomes much more complicated than a simple murder investigation--soon there are conspiracies between the Jewish gangs, the leaders of the reversion committee, even the US Government! I love Chabon's writing style, and the premise for the book is certainly interesting. The plot, however, becomes a bit tangled along the way, and at least in the audio version, a bit confusing at times with a prodigious number of characters and some shifting back and forth in time that wasn't always easy to keep straight. Still, a great, winding story with a scope that defies genre classification, being part noir murder mystery, part speculative fiction, part social commentary, part literary novel. And does that blending very well. A.
Cheryl
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
June 2009 Reading
I'm doing another "theme month" and am calling June "Support Your Local Library" month. There are a lot of great series that I have a hard time finding at my primary source of books, paperbackswap.com but that my library has. Of course, with my burgeoning TBR shelves rapidly approaching the 600 mark again, it doesn't seem practical to check out library books, but it's the only way I'll ever get to read these series, I think. So most of my books in June will be library books, although not all.
1. DRAGONSONG by Anne McCaffrey. (AUDIO) #4 in publication order of the Pern books, this is the first one in the Harper Hall trilogy. We were briefly introduced to Menolly in previous books, but this is her story--how she came to be a harper, her life at Half Circle Sea Hold and how she came to reside at Benden Wyr instead. Menolly's father is the SeaHolder (head of the Hold) at Half Circle, and very much a staunch traditionalist. Women are kept in their places, not given much information about the outside world, and most certainly NEVER become Harpers. So when the elderly harper at Half Circle dies, Menolly isn't allowed to follow in his footsteps, even though she is given the task of teaching the children and singing the songs that need singing until the new harper arrives several months later. Despite her talent for singing, playing and songwriting, fifteen-year-old Menolly can only look forward to a life of cleaning fish, repairing nets and caring for the old uncles and aunties of the hold, a prospect which chills her to the bone. She runs away one night, ends up in a fire lizard cave, and then is found during thread fall by a Dragonrider from Benden Wyr and is brought there for safety. Benden is much kinder to its women and Menolly finds she wants to stay. A different reader from the previous books in series, although no less enjoyable. Looking forward to the next in this trilogy within a huge series. A.
2. ALAS, BABYLON by Pat Frank. Post-apocalyptic fiction, a classic written the year after I was born, which I've been meaning to read for years. The scene is set for a devastating nuclear event when Randy Bragg, small-town lawyer in central Florida, receives a telegram from his brother Mark, a military intelligence man, that informs him that his wife and kids will be joining Randy in Florida the next day and ends with the cryptic phrase, 'Alas, Babylon' which is a code word between them for impending disaster. Randy does the best he can to prepare, stocking up on groceries and necessities like batteries and gasoline, and sure enough, just a couple of days after Helen Bragg's arrival, Russia launches a multi-faceted nuclear attack that destroys most major US cities, various strategic military bases, and many allied cities around the world. Randy and a small group of friends and neighbors, curiously untouched by the radiation and fallout, learn to exist without most of the things we take for granted--of course, this was probably a little easier in 1959 than it would be today, given our technology-driven society, but it was still a big fall for them. A bit dated, with responses and dialogue that seem a bit cliched, but still a great story with a lot to think about and a definite must for anyone who likes reading this type of book. B+
3. THE MERCHANT'S MARK by Pat McIntosh. #3 Gil Cunningham historical mystery set in 1490's Glasgow, Scotland. Gil (a lawyer) is present when a merchant friend of his opens a barrel of books that the two of them ordered together, only to find no books--instead, a man's head in brine and a saddlebag of jewels and coins which look to be part of the previous King's bounty that has been missing. Augie, the merchant friend, is soon charged with the unknown man's murder (a frame-up if Gil ever saw one!) so he and his future father-in-law (a master mason) set out to investigate the crime back where the merchant's cart had been loaded and to then follow its path to see if they can find where the obvious switch was made. Meanwhile at home, Gil's betrothed, Alys, and his sister Kate investigate (unbeknownst to Gil) by temporarily moving in to Augie's household. Augie is a widower of two years and his home and children are a shambles, but Alys and Kate soon have them whipped into shape, all the while gleaning information. When they catch one of Augie's cart men breaking into the house and he is then subsequently murdered, they learn that an evil axe-man that they'd previously seen in the pub with the murdered man is likely after them. I enjoy this series and feel that it's a shame that it's not more widely recognized, but I have to admit that the use of the Scottish vernacular sometimes gets old, especially as it's OLD Scottish. Sometimes it's enough to draw you out of the story as you have to look up what is meant, although most of the time it's not too difficult and just slows your reading speed a little. It's also not consistently used, which is kind of puzzling. I wasn't as crazy about this book as I was about the first two, but still a decent read. The book was split, the story told partly about Gil and Pierre, partly about Alys and Kate, and there were just a whole lot of characters to keep straight and several sub-plots. Of course it was only when the two sets of investigators were reunited that all the puzzle pieces fell into place for the characters, but by then there was really no surprises for the reader. Normally I enjoy a more complex, winding mystery, but that coupled with the extensive use of Scots accent/words made it a little more difficult to actually "enjoy" the story. B-.
4. THE LAMORNA WINK by Martha Grimes, #16 Chief Inspector Richard Jury/Melrose Plant British mystery. This is a bit of an odd book, in that we don't really see or hear from Jury until about the last quarter of the book. This book is more about Melrose--he is off to Cornwall, where he's planning to rent a house by the sea for a few months. In a contemplative mood, Melrose reflects on his past, but on his first day there, meets a young man named Johnny (who works three jobs!) and comes to like him almost immediately. Johnny's aunt Chris, who has cared for him since childhood, disappears--and several hours later, a woman's body is found shot to death in the nearby village of Lamorna. No, it's not Chris--but it's a woman who used to live in the area whom Chris once threatened. No one who knew Chris Wells could believe she had killed this woman, but where is she if she isn't involved somehow? Melrose is also intrigued by the four-year-old case of the deaths of two children who lived in the house he's renting, which is why it's available; the parents could not tolerate living there any longer and the tales going around say it's haunted. Melrose calls Cmdr. Brian Macalvie to look into Chris Wells' disappearance (he's already investigating the murder of the Lamorna woman) and discovers that it was he who was the primary officer in the Bletchley childrens' case as well. Of course the cases are related. Jury is off in Northern Ireland and doesn't come to Cornwall until just before the case breaks. An intriguing, interesting story, and although I had a gut feeling about the baddie, I didn't really know WHY until much further along when some more clues got uncovered. Very enjoyable read. A.
5. CHARLIE BONE AND THE HIDDEN KING by Jenny Nimmo (AUDIO) #5 Children of the Red King young adult fantasy series. Another series of adventures await Charlie Bone and his friends at Bloor's Academy. Their nemesis, Manfred Bloor is still about, and although he's lost his hypnotising endowment, something new is brewing. Charlie's best friend Benjamin Brown returns with his parents from Hong Kong after many months away, only to discover that his beloved dog Runner Bean, who has been at the Pets Cafe, has disappeared, along with every other animal in the city. Billy Raven talks to animals and his rat Rembrandt tells him that 'something bad has awoken and the animals are afraid and have run away.' Charlie, his uncle Paton and their circle try to figure out just what's awoken--and Charlie finds that whatever the Shadow is, it has his mother bewitched and his grandmother Maisie literally frozen under a spell. Charlie is in a race against time to recover the Mirror of Amaret so he can travel through it to his father--believed dead, but now known to be simply 'lost'--before he is totally forgotten and fades away. As usual, an excellent reading of an engaging, imaginative story. A.
6. WRITTEN IN BLOOD by Caroline Graham. #4 Chief Inspector Barnaby British police series. A local writer's group invites a famous author, Max Jennings, to come speak to them at their monthly meeting, and lo and behold, he agrees. Turns out he knew the secretary of the group, Gerald Hadleigh, many years previous, although Gerald admits this to no one except his neighbor Rex--and confesses that he's somewhat afraid of Max. When Gerald turns up dead the morning after their meeting, head bludgeoned in with a candlestick, Jennings is the obvious first suspect--and he's apparently done a runner as no one can find him. But was he really the killer, or were there other deep-seated emotions brewing in the small enclave that drove one of the writer's club to kill? I liked this book better than the previous one in the series by far. The mystery itself was more interesting, the people captured my attention, and I felt like I was getting to know Barnaby and Troy in more depth, too. As usual, Barnaby doesn't show up until a good few chapters in, when the central characters in the cast have been introduced and little tidbits of information strewn about. I figured out part of the mystery ahead of time, but not the ever-important 'whodunit' part til close to the end. Jolly good rebound, and I definitely will keep on in the series. A.
7. FACE DOWN BESIDE ST. ANNE's WELL by Kathy Lynn Emerson. #9 Lady Susanna Appleton historical mystery set in Elizabethan England with all its political intrigues. Rosamond, Susanna's 12-year-old foster daughter (the child of one of her dead husband's mistresses) involves Susanna in an investigation involving the death of her French tutor at St. Anne's Well. It's been declared an accident, but Rosamond is sure she was murdered, so Susanna and her housekeeper Jennet are off to supposedly take the baths at nearby Buxton while looking into things. What they discover is a whole nest of plotters to put Mary Stuart back on the throne--but was Madame Poitier's death related to that, or to something personal? This was a fairly typical entry in this series, an easy light read, good period detail and a relatively interesting story. However, I have to say that this series has really lost its shine for me. I absolutely loved the first few, but depsite the fact that I recognize that it's a decent book, I found that it felt like work getting through it. Not really sure why, perhaps it's the lack of Susanna's character development as the series has gone on--she seems to have become much less interesting than she was early on in the series. I do know that I'm glad I got this one from the library rather than spending much effort tracking it down myself. There's one left in the series, and while I do plan to finish it off eventually, I suspect it may be awhile. C+
8. IN BIG TROUBLE by Laura Lippman (AUDIO) #4 Tess Monaghan mystery. Tess is off to Texas when she gets a letter from there with a picture of her ex-boyfriend Crow with the headline "In Big Trouble" above it. She ignores this letter for a few days, but when she eventually tries to contact him, finds that his phone has been disconnected and he's vanished. Contacting his parents, whom she's never met, leads to them hiring her to find him, as they have not heard from him in over a month either--very unusual. So, retainer in hand, Tess tells herself that this is a job and nothing more. A dead body turns up in the last place he was known to be--so Tess can only wonder if Crow is indeed in big trouble. She finds him with a new band, with a waif-like female singer that Tess first believes is his new girlfriend, but eventually finds out otherwise. The plot twists and turns and eventually Tess solves things, not an easy feat in a strange place where she's feeling like a fish out of water and has no idea where to look. But people are people and the motives for murder seldom vary much. I figured out a few of the side plots, but not the main mystery until close to the end. Excellent listen/story, I think my favorite in this series so far. I'm very much looking forward to the next one. A+
9. TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE by Judy Clemens #3 Stella Crown mystery. It's nearly Christmas in rural Pennsylvania, and Stella is half-heartedly making holiday preparations on the farm. The last thing that anyone wants to have to deal with is a murder and a disappearance--although focusing on someone else's problems is ever a way to avoid confronting your own. That's what happens when Wolf, the tattoo artist who is working on Stella's new tat, disappears mid-tattoo. Wolf's wife Mandy calls him into the back room, and Stella, tired and feeling warm and comfortable, falls asleep for about twenty minutes. When she awakens, Wolf and Mandy are both gone, with Mandy's body turning up later in the dumpster. Everyone who knows Wolf knows he would never have done his wife harm, so Stella sets out to help the police by inquiring among the biker and body art crowd who would likely clam up under questioning by the cops. Mandy and Wolf were both political-minded and had been active in a group putting forth the rights of tattoo artists, so the police and Stella wonder whether there is some connection to Mandy's death and Wolf's disappearance or if it was some personal motivation. Meanwhile, Stella's former hottie Nick shows up, and ends up snowed in at the farm for the holiday with Stella and her farmhand Lucy, her daughter Tess and Lucy's boyfriend Lenny. Still unsure of her feelings, things don't go so well, especially at first. Once again in this book, Stella seems constantly on edge with raw emotions and she's prickly as a porcupine. Her family and friends seem to be well-endowed with forbearance, as I think I would have just drifted away from someone who is such a crab-ass all the time! But they stick with her through thick and thin, and so I guess I will, too, if only to discover if she finally finds some happiness. I do like Stella, I wish she'd just lighten up a bit sometimes. There is promise, judging from the ending. B+
10. EMPIRE OF IVORY by Naomi Novik. #4 in the Temeraire historical fantasy series, which is set during the Napoleonic war but with dragons. Laurence and Temeraire and their exhausted team have finally reached the shores of the UK, fighting off a few French dragons along the coast, and Laurence is surprised that they are not met by any of the coverts of dragons and their fliers. When they are landed, they learn that during the year they have been off in China, a horrible virus has attacked most of the dragons and many have died already while others--some of them members of Laurence and Temeraire's own group--are gravely ill. With no cure in sight, the dragon doctors are desperate and eventually Laurence, Temeraire and a crew of the feral dragons they brought back with them head to Africa to attempt to find the cure--to determine what it was that Temeraire ate or did during their trip to keep the virus at bay, since he had nothing but a mild cold. This leads to a whole series of complications, including the issue of slavery. There are political machinations at work that are not in the best interest of dragons, and Temeraire is hot under the collar...er, ruff...to make right the injustices against his kind and to make people realize that dragons are beings in their own right, not someone else's pet or property. I really enjoy this series and look forward to the next and will be eagerly watching the movie news to see if it is going to be adapted for the big screen. (Peter Jackson has bought the movie rights.) A.
11. GASA-GASA GIRL by Naomi Hirahara #2 Mas Arai mystery. Mas, a 70-year-old owner of his own gardening business in Los Angeles, is off to New York in response to a phone call from his daugher Mari. Something is wrong but he doesn't know what, and Mari isn't sure either, just why she's summoned him after being quite stand-offish for many years. Her husband Lloyd is the gardener for a Japanese museum's grounds and they are working on a major restoration project when the main benefactor is killed. Both Mari and Lloyd are suspected in the shooting death, as is Mas initially, as he is the one who found the body. Mas is lost in New York. Add to the stress of not knowing how things work (the subway, for instance) or where to go, his grandson Takeo (Mari and Lloyd's infant son) is quite ill and is hospitalized while the police are questioning them about the murder. Mas barely knows his daughter, having seen her only briefly in the past ten years since his wife's death from cancer. Despite this, and his typically isolationist lifestyle, his sense of family awakens and wanting to protect her, he--with the help of Tug Yamada, a friend from LA who is also in NY visiting his daughter--investigates some aspects of the case on his own. Mas finds he even rather likes his hakujin son-in-law. Eventually the case is solved, with a bit of a surprise (for me anyway) although I'd figured out parts of it. I enjoy this series, a peek at a culture I have little experience with, and wish there were more, but I believe there's only one book left in this series, and that published in 2006, so it looks as though it may be a dead end. :-( A.
12. PUSS 'N CAHOOTS by Rita Mae Brown (AUDIO) #14 Mrs. Murphy mystery set in Crozet, Virginia, although in this book the crew is off to another part of the state for an equestrian event as Harry accompanies her husband Fair (an equine vet) and also plans to look for a horse to purchase for her friend Alicia Palmer. While attending the events, Harry also visits a good friend Joan and her husband Larry who are horse breeders, and they meet a bunch of the other folks associated with the event, from breeders to the riders entered in the events themselves. When one of the Mexican grooms is brutally murdered during a thunderstorm, speculation runs rampant as to why and who had motive. Of course the animals (tabby cat Mrs. Murphy, gray fat cat Pewter and Tucker, the Welsh Corgi) investigate and have a private war with Miss Nasty, the pet monkey of one of the other riders. I liked this book MUCH better than the last one, but it still doesn't seem to be quite up to par with many of the earlier books in the series. Still, like most cozies, it's about the characters and the settings and it was a nice visit with "the gang" as always, and the reader is very pleasant and easy to listen to as well. B.
13. AND THEN THERE WERE NONE by Agatha Christie. Classic "locked room" mystery (or actually, "isolated island" in this case) written in 1939, with ten people invited to an island off the coast of Devon under false pretenses, each thinking they will be having a holiday, some thinking they're meeting someone known to them, or were recommended by so-and-so, or that they will be employed by Mr. U.N. Owen. Each bedroom in the manor house has a copy of the poem "Ten Little Indians" on the wall, and in one of the downstairs rooms there is a setup with ten Indian figurines--which is appropriate as they are on Indian Island. One by one the guests are killed just as described in the poem and the figurines disappear. As time passes the remaining guests of course conclude that since they can find no trace of their host, that it must be one of them...but who? And why?? This is my all-time favorite mystery. I first enjoyed it at the age of 10 or 12, have read it several times since then, and it was a great pleasure indeed to read it once again, even knowing the solution. Christie was indeed the Mistress of Mystery! A+
14. THE ANGEL'S GAME by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Zafón , the consummate storyteller, returns to Barcelona in his followup to The Shadow of the Wind, although this story takes place years before that, before the main character in TSOTW, Daniel Sempere, is even born. The author has said he plans to write four novels in this setting, all somewhat entwined with a few shared characters and situations, but with stories that are also totally stand-alone. I look forward to them all! This book features David Martin, popular author of 'penny dreadfuls' and suspense novels under the pseudonym Ignatius B. Samson. David, a loner who has been so almost since birth with his mother leaving his father when he was but a child, and his father dying before David reached his teens, finds himself increasingly isolated socially, aside from his enjoyable contacts with Señor Sempere at his bookstore. He is contacted by a mysterious publisher, Andreas Corelli, to write a book for him. The book is to be a story that will inspire a new religion and he will be paid an exorbitant amount of money to write it, paid up front. He agrees, and then David, who has been told he has an inoperable brain tumor, is cured and begins facing his life with a new vigor. After some time working on his book, he begins to see frightening parallels to a book he plucked from the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, and the author who wrote it many years before. While this is happening, his obsession with Cristina, the daughter of the chauffeur of his mentor, Pedro Vidal, grows stronger and becomes dangerous when she marries Vidal himself. Betrayed once again, David's life spirals downward as he still obsessively works on his masterpiece. While similar in style to The Shadow of the Wind, this novel is darker, more overtly violent, and has more supernatural elements to it. I liked it....no, I loved it. Zafón's lyrical, richly textured writing makes his telling of the story a delight to read--even though many times the circumstances the protagonist is in make the story itself painful. This is *not* The Shadow of the Wind reprised. It is less, and yet it is more. There are many dangling loose ends that make you wonder, and I can't help but hope that some of these threads will be grabbed and woven into another tale in the other books planned for Zafón's Barcelona. Another for the Keeper shelf! A+
15. THE BLUE LAST by Martha Grimes. (AUDIO) #17 Richard Jury/Melrose Plant mystery. Jury's policeman friend Mickey Haggerty, whom he's not seen in a number of years, asks to meet him, but upon reacquainting himself with Mickey, discovers it's not a problematic case that has Haggerty calling on Scotland Yard, but a personal case that he wants Jury to look into 'off the record.' Puzzled by the request, Mickey confides that he has a rare form of leukemia and has only months to live, and although he's the officer in charge of the murder of Simon Croft, he has a personal interest in the case as his father had been friends with Croft years previously, and he believes that there is a mystery buried in the past that may be linked to Croft's death. Croft had been writing a book about the war period and since his notes and the book's manuscript were stolen, that some detail that Croft uncovered from that time could be something that someone wanted hushed up. Jury is loathe to go back to explore the details of the past, particularly the Blitz, during which his own mother was killed, but can hardly refuse a dying friend. The Blue Last is the name of the pub where events during the Blitz tie to the present. Meanwhile, Melrose and Trueblood are off to Italy to attempt to authenticate a painting, and upon his return, Jury asks him to pose as a gardener in a rich family's home associated with his case. Although some folks don't like this foray away from the actual cases, I do enjoy Melrose's adventures with his friends in Long Piddlington and this one was especially good. I do have to say though, that I did NOT like the reader for this book. Although he did a very good reading, he totally made Melrose sound like a pretentious git with the snotty, posh accent he gave him--which is not at all how Melrose is. AND he mispronounced Melrose's butler's name, Ruthven--I remember this because in a previous book there was much discussion about just how it was supposed to be said. Argh! I have the next few here in print and I believe I will stick with those, since the readers for the series seem to change with each book, and who knows what the quality of the next one would be. I enjoyed this story despite the reader (which is the reason for the slight markdown in the grading) and was very surprised by the ending, for a nice change too! A-.
16. MAGIC STUDY by Maria V. Snyder #2 in the "Study" fantasy series featuring Yelena, a young woman with magic powers who had been kidnapped from her home in Sitia as a child and kept in a prison in Ixia, then used as the ruler's food taster. When the government changes hands and she is banished, she returns to the home she's not seen since the age of six, only to find that her welcome is a bit thin with her brother Leif accusing her of being a spy. She longs to spend time getting reacquainted with her parents and extended family, but must set out to enroll in the Citadel, where she will learn to control and use her magic. There she learns that some sort of tribal serial killer is on the loose, and that not everyone there is very welcoming, either, with one of the Master Magicians wanting her to be put to death as a spy as well. After a mind-reading assures them that she has no intention of spying, Yelena sets out to learn her lessons while plotting how to catch the serial killer. This book was okay, but I didn't particularly like it as much as the first one, which really intrigued me. The author has a great writing style, and it's easy to read and has an engaging tone. But this book has more of a romancey feel to it, and I thought Yelena in many respects to have lost her appeal as a strong female character and become something of a silly girl prone to making stupid decisions. I probably will at least attempt to read the third one, simply because I have it already, but I'm dubious as to how much appeal it will have for me if the storyline continues in this vein. C+
17. A SUMMER OF DISCONTENT by Susanna Gregory. #8 Matthew Bartholomew historical mystery set in 1350's Cambridge, UK. Matthew (a physician and professor at Michaelhouse College at Cambridge University) and his friend Michael (a monk and also an agent of the Bishop of Ely) are off to Ely at a summons from the Bishop. Matt is accompanying his friend but hopes to spend time in the library at the Priory there to gather more information for the treatise on fevers he's working on. Of course, upon arrival, they discover that the Bishop has summoned Michael because he is accused of murder and wants Michael to investigate and have him exonerated. Michael, not at all sure in his heart of hearts that his boss is innocent, investigates, often times asking Matt to tag along to offer his professional opinion, so Matt doesn't get as much studying done as he would like. When two other deaths that had been presumed accidents are tied to the first death (after Matt's examination of the bodies) the number of suspects skyrockets as none of the dead were liked by the townspeople nor the clergy involved. Of course they eventually (after a long and twisty course of events and much visiting and re-visiting the various suspects) find the killer, who was not a surprise to me. I enjoy these mysteries but the last couple especially seem to have become a bit too long with quite a lot of repetition and needless foraying back and forth, covering the same materials over and over. Still, it's been many months since I had a visit to medieval Cambridge and did enjoy this one, even if it was a bit long-winded. B+
18. THE LACE READER by Brunonia Barry. (AUDIO) Towner Whitney has come home to Salem, Massachussetts, responding appropriately when her brother calls to let her know that her 85-year-old great-aunt Eva is missing. She hasn't been home for fifteen years, and the town is full of harsh memories for her--most notably, her twin sister Lynley's suicide when they were seventeen years old. Lynley had been given to her aunt and uncle at birth as they were unable to conceive, and Towner had
never quite forgiven her mother for that, especially when her uncle Cal turned out to be a drunk and abuser, who beat his wife and sexually abused his adoptive daughter, and who has now 'found God' and become the leader of an extremist religion hell-bent on persecuting witches. Towner is a 'reader' as many of the Whitney women are--intuitives, reading people's thoughts and intentions, and specifically having the talent of reading lace, the way some read tea leaves. Towner's mother May runs a
women's shelter on Yellow Dog Island where the women are taught to make Ipswitch lace by hand; they are not close, and Towner (whose birth name was Sophya, but she refused to respond to that at some point in her childhood) spent her last months with Eva in town. Towner has lived in California for many years, having undergone serious and prolonged psychiatric therapy, including ECT (electro-shock therapy) which has left her with gaps in her memory. So when she comes home, her fragile mental health takes a tumble backward as the memories assault her, complicated by her attempts to recover from a recent hysterectomy and the cop investigating Eva's disappearance, John Rafferty, who finds himself falling in love with Towner. A multi-layered story that shifts back and forth in time with an interesting plot twist that, I have to admit, I did see coming about halfwaythrough the book. Skillfully written, a compelling story that gives you a real sense of place in modern-day Salem (where the author lives) as well as an intimate look into the world of mental illness. With elements of magic, this will probably not appeal to those who aren't fans of "woo woo" but if you don't mind a bit of the supernatural, you'll find this a wonderful and compelling story. I wondered whether there are such a thing as 'lace readers' but it seems that it's a figment of the author's imagination with no historical record of it. Very enjoyable listen, read by one of my favorite readers, Alyssa Bresnahan. I'll definitely be looking out for more by this author--it's hard to believe this is a first novel. A+
19. 47 RULES OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE BANK ROBBERS by Troy Cook. A wacky ride across the southwest begins with father-daughter bankrobbing team Wyatt and Tara pulling off a couple of major jobs. Tara, who's been helping her father rob banks since before her age was in double digits always disguised as a male, has begun to become decidedly less than happy with her father's choice of careers for her. Although she adheres to Wyatt's rules of crime, he's become increasingly violent and seems to thrive on the killing almost more than the money from the bank jobs, and Tara's getting tired of it. When she sees young Max Williams (of course he's a sheriff's son, though Tara doesn't know it yet!) in a bar in the town they're scouting for the next job, something comes alive for the 22-year-old, but Wyatt (as always) practically kills the young man as he does anyone who looks twice at his lovely daughter. And Max, smitten himself, certainly DID look. And then it happens--Max turns up at the bank
during the job and Tara doesn't follow Rule #47. The final rule: When in Doubt, Take 'em Out. She lets him get away--and when her father takes her to task for it later, she snaps and breaks up their little team, clocking a drunken Wyatt a good one and
leaving him naked with some of the money in their hotel room. She hooks up with Max and away they go, not realizing that some of Tara and Wyatt's ex-partners, having recognized Wyatt's voice on the sound bit on the surveillance video played on the
news, are now after them and their share of the cash. Add to the mix the sleazy, perverted FBI agent who ignores his much smarter subordinate and gets off on watching the blood and gore of the surveillance tapes and you've got a right ribald mix of "interesting things" just waiting to happen--and happen they did! This was a highly original work that I mostly liked a lot, but the fact that I was tempted to skim through several parts of it leads me to think that the execution of the idea was just not quite spot on, although I can't pin down just why not. Perhaps it was just too many wacky characters to try to keep tabs on, or the dearth of so-called "normal" folks for them to play off of, I don't know. The book was laugh out loud funny in spots, yet other parts seemed to have humor that was just a little forced. All in all though, an enjoyable read and an author I look forward to reading more of. B+
Current reads:
DNF: THE BLACK WIDOW AGENCY by Felicia Donovan. I gave it 50 pages, but while the concept was quite interesting, the characters were stereotypical and two-dimensional and the book read like a recitation, like pieces of dry, boring prose stacked together rather than woven skillfully into a story I could care about. NEXT!
DNF: THE ANTEATER OF DEATH by Betty Webb. Another one I'm glad I got from the library. I've enjoyed a couple of mysteries in another series this author did, but this is apparently her try at a cozy and it really doesn't work. It's set in a zoo, with the main character (can't even recall her name now, although she had four or five of them...Theodora Something Something Something....Teddy, that's right....) as one of the zookeepers and a Giant Anteater accused of the murder. I yawned my way through about 35 pages and decided to let it go back to the library.
Cheryl
1. DRAGONSONG by Anne McCaffrey. (AUDIO) #4 in publication order of the Pern books, this is the first one in the Harper Hall trilogy. We were briefly introduced to Menolly in previous books, but this is her story--how she came to be a harper, her life at Half Circle Sea Hold and how she came to reside at Benden Wyr instead. Menolly's father is the SeaHolder (head of the Hold) at Half Circle, and very much a staunch traditionalist. Women are kept in their places, not given much information about the outside world, and most certainly NEVER become Harpers. So when the elderly harper at Half Circle dies, Menolly isn't allowed to follow in his footsteps, even though she is given the task of teaching the children and singing the songs that need singing until the new harper arrives several months later. Despite her talent for singing, playing and songwriting, fifteen-year-old Menolly can only look forward to a life of cleaning fish, repairing nets and caring for the old uncles and aunties of the hold, a prospect which chills her to the bone. She runs away one night, ends up in a fire lizard cave, and then is found during thread fall by a Dragonrider from Benden Wyr and is brought there for safety. Benden is much kinder to its women and Menolly finds she wants to stay. A different reader from the previous books in series, although no less enjoyable. Looking forward to the next in this trilogy within a huge series. A.
2. ALAS, BABYLON by Pat Frank. Post-apocalyptic fiction, a classic written the year after I was born, which I've been meaning to read for years. The scene is set for a devastating nuclear event when Randy Bragg, small-town lawyer in central Florida, receives a telegram from his brother Mark, a military intelligence man, that informs him that his wife and kids will be joining Randy in Florida the next day and ends with the cryptic phrase, 'Alas, Babylon' which is a code word between them for impending disaster. Randy does the best he can to prepare, stocking up on groceries and necessities like batteries and gasoline, and sure enough, just a couple of days after Helen Bragg's arrival, Russia launches a multi-faceted nuclear attack that destroys most major US cities, various strategic military bases, and many allied cities around the world. Randy and a small group of friends and neighbors, curiously untouched by the radiation and fallout, learn to exist without most of the things we take for granted--of course, this was probably a little easier in 1959 than it would be today, given our technology-driven society, but it was still a big fall for them. A bit dated, with responses and dialogue that seem a bit cliched, but still a great story with a lot to think about and a definite must for anyone who likes reading this type of book. B+
3. THE MERCHANT'S MARK by Pat McIntosh. #3 Gil Cunningham historical mystery set in 1490's Glasgow, Scotland. Gil (a lawyer) is present when a merchant friend of his opens a barrel of books that the two of them ordered together, only to find no books--instead, a man's head in brine and a saddlebag of jewels and coins which look to be part of the previous King's bounty that has been missing. Augie, the merchant friend, is soon charged with the unknown man's murder (a frame-up if Gil ever saw one!) so he and his future father-in-law (a master mason) set out to investigate the crime back where the merchant's cart had been loaded and to then follow its path to see if they can find where the obvious switch was made. Meanwhile at home, Gil's betrothed, Alys, and his sister Kate investigate (unbeknownst to Gil) by temporarily moving in to Augie's household. Augie is a widower of two years and his home and children are a shambles, but Alys and Kate soon have them whipped into shape, all the while gleaning information. When they catch one of Augie's cart men breaking into the house and he is then subsequently murdered, they learn that an evil axe-man that they'd previously seen in the pub with the murdered man is likely after them. I enjoy this series and feel that it's a shame that it's not more widely recognized, but I have to admit that the use of the Scottish vernacular sometimes gets old, especially as it's OLD Scottish. Sometimes it's enough to draw you out of the story as you have to look up what is meant, although most of the time it's not too difficult and just slows your reading speed a little. It's also not consistently used, which is kind of puzzling. I wasn't as crazy about this book as I was about the first two, but still a decent read. The book was split, the story told partly about Gil and Pierre, partly about Alys and Kate, and there were just a whole lot of characters to keep straight and several sub-plots. Of course it was only when the two sets of investigators were reunited that all the puzzle pieces fell into place for the characters, but by then there was really no surprises for the reader. Normally I enjoy a more complex, winding mystery, but that coupled with the extensive use of Scots accent/words made it a little more difficult to actually "enjoy" the story. B-.
4. THE LAMORNA WINK by Martha Grimes, #16 Chief Inspector Richard Jury/Melrose Plant British mystery. This is a bit of an odd book, in that we don't really see or hear from Jury until about the last quarter of the book. This book is more about Melrose--he is off to Cornwall, where he's planning to rent a house by the sea for a few months. In a contemplative mood, Melrose reflects on his past, but on his first day there, meets a young man named Johnny (who works three jobs!) and comes to like him almost immediately. Johnny's aunt Chris, who has cared for him since childhood, disappears--and several hours later, a woman's body is found shot to death in the nearby village of Lamorna. No, it's not Chris--but it's a woman who used to live in the area whom Chris once threatened. No one who knew Chris Wells could believe she had killed this woman, but where is she if she isn't involved somehow? Melrose is also intrigued by the four-year-old case of the deaths of two children who lived in the house he's renting, which is why it's available; the parents could not tolerate living there any longer and the tales going around say it's haunted. Melrose calls Cmdr. Brian Macalvie to look into Chris Wells' disappearance (he's already investigating the murder of the Lamorna woman) and discovers that it was he who was the primary officer in the Bletchley childrens' case as well. Of course the cases are related. Jury is off in Northern Ireland and doesn't come to Cornwall until just before the case breaks. An intriguing, interesting story, and although I had a gut feeling about the baddie, I didn't really know WHY until much further along when some more clues got uncovered. Very enjoyable read. A.
5. CHARLIE BONE AND THE HIDDEN KING by Jenny Nimmo (AUDIO) #5 Children of the Red King young adult fantasy series. Another series of adventures await Charlie Bone and his friends at Bloor's Academy. Their nemesis, Manfred Bloor is still about, and although he's lost his hypnotising endowment, something new is brewing. Charlie's best friend Benjamin Brown returns with his parents from Hong Kong after many months away, only to discover that his beloved dog Runner Bean, who has been at the Pets Cafe, has disappeared, along with every other animal in the city. Billy Raven talks to animals and his rat Rembrandt tells him that 'something bad has awoken and the animals are afraid and have run away.' Charlie, his uncle Paton and their circle try to figure out just what's awoken--and Charlie finds that whatever the Shadow is, it has his mother bewitched and his grandmother Maisie literally frozen under a spell. Charlie is in a race against time to recover the Mirror of Amaret so he can travel through it to his father--believed dead, but now known to be simply 'lost'--before he is totally forgotten and fades away. As usual, an excellent reading of an engaging, imaginative story. A.
6. WRITTEN IN BLOOD by Caroline Graham. #4 Chief Inspector Barnaby British police series. A local writer's group invites a famous author, Max Jennings, to come speak to them at their monthly meeting, and lo and behold, he agrees. Turns out he knew the secretary of the group, Gerald Hadleigh, many years previous, although Gerald admits this to no one except his neighbor Rex--and confesses that he's somewhat afraid of Max. When Gerald turns up dead the morning after their meeting, head bludgeoned in with a candlestick, Jennings is the obvious first suspect--and he's apparently done a runner as no one can find him. But was he really the killer, or were there other deep-seated emotions brewing in the small enclave that drove one of the writer's club to kill? I liked this book better than the previous one in the series by far. The mystery itself was more interesting, the people captured my attention, and I felt like I was getting to know Barnaby and Troy in more depth, too. As usual, Barnaby doesn't show up until a good few chapters in, when the central characters in the cast have been introduced and little tidbits of information strewn about. I figured out part of the mystery ahead of time, but not the ever-important 'whodunit' part til close to the end. Jolly good rebound, and I definitely will keep on in the series. A.
7. FACE DOWN BESIDE ST. ANNE's WELL by Kathy Lynn Emerson. #9 Lady Susanna Appleton historical mystery set in Elizabethan England with all its political intrigues. Rosamond, Susanna's 12-year-old foster daughter (the child of one of her dead husband's mistresses) involves Susanna in an investigation involving the death of her French tutor at St. Anne's Well. It's been declared an accident, but Rosamond is sure she was murdered, so Susanna and her housekeeper Jennet are off to supposedly take the baths at nearby Buxton while looking into things. What they discover is a whole nest of plotters to put Mary Stuart back on the throne--but was Madame Poitier's death related to that, or to something personal? This was a fairly typical entry in this series, an easy light read, good period detail and a relatively interesting story. However, I have to say that this series has really lost its shine for me. I absolutely loved the first few, but depsite the fact that I recognize that it's a decent book, I found that it felt like work getting through it. Not really sure why, perhaps it's the lack of Susanna's character development as the series has gone on--she seems to have become much less interesting than she was early on in the series. I do know that I'm glad I got this one from the library rather than spending much effort tracking it down myself. There's one left in the series, and while I do plan to finish it off eventually, I suspect it may be awhile. C+
8. IN BIG TROUBLE by Laura Lippman (AUDIO) #4 Tess Monaghan mystery. Tess is off to Texas when she gets a letter from there with a picture of her ex-boyfriend Crow with the headline "In Big Trouble" above it. She ignores this letter for a few days, but when she eventually tries to contact him, finds that his phone has been disconnected and he's vanished. Contacting his parents, whom she's never met, leads to them hiring her to find him, as they have not heard from him in over a month either--very unusual. So, retainer in hand, Tess tells herself that this is a job and nothing more. A dead body turns up in the last place he was known to be--so Tess can only wonder if Crow is indeed in big trouble. She finds him with a new band, with a waif-like female singer that Tess first believes is his new girlfriend, but eventually finds out otherwise. The plot twists and turns and eventually Tess solves things, not an easy feat in a strange place where she's feeling like a fish out of water and has no idea where to look. But people are people and the motives for murder seldom vary much. I figured out a few of the side plots, but not the main mystery until close to the end. Excellent listen/story, I think my favorite in this series so far. I'm very much looking forward to the next one. A+
9. TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE by Judy Clemens #3 Stella Crown mystery. It's nearly Christmas in rural Pennsylvania, and Stella is half-heartedly making holiday preparations on the farm. The last thing that anyone wants to have to deal with is a murder and a disappearance--although focusing on someone else's problems is ever a way to avoid confronting your own. That's what happens when Wolf, the tattoo artist who is working on Stella's new tat, disappears mid-tattoo. Wolf's wife Mandy calls him into the back room, and Stella, tired and feeling warm and comfortable, falls asleep for about twenty minutes. When she awakens, Wolf and Mandy are both gone, with Mandy's body turning up later in the dumpster. Everyone who knows Wolf knows he would never have done his wife harm, so Stella sets out to help the police by inquiring among the biker and body art crowd who would likely clam up under questioning by the cops. Mandy and Wolf were both political-minded and had been active in a group putting forth the rights of tattoo artists, so the police and Stella wonder whether there is some connection to Mandy's death and Wolf's disappearance or if it was some personal motivation. Meanwhile, Stella's former hottie Nick shows up, and ends up snowed in at the farm for the holiday with Stella and her farmhand Lucy, her daughter Tess and Lucy's boyfriend Lenny. Still unsure of her feelings, things don't go so well, especially at first. Once again in this book, Stella seems constantly on edge with raw emotions and she's prickly as a porcupine. Her family and friends seem to be well-endowed with forbearance, as I think I would have just drifted away from someone who is such a crab-ass all the time! But they stick with her through thick and thin, and so I guess I will, too, if only to discover if she finally finds some happiness. I do like Stella, I wish she'd just lighten up a bit sometimes. There is promise, judging from the ending. B+
10. EMPIRE OF IVORY by Naomi Novik. #4 in the Temeraire historical fantasy series, which is set during the Napoleonic war but with dragons. Laurence and Temeraire and their exhausted team have finally reached the shores of the UK, fighting off a few French dragons along the coast, and Laurence is surprised that they are not met by any of the coverts of dragons and their fliers. When they are landed, they learn that during the year they have been off in China, a horrible virus has attacked most of the dragons and many have died already while others--some of them members of Laurence and Temeraire's own group--are gravely ill. With no cure in sight, the dragon doctors are desperate and eventually Laurence, Temeraire and a crew of the feral dragons they brought back with them head to Africa to attempt to find the cure--to determine what it was that Temeraire ate or did during their trip to keep the virus at bay, since he had nothing but a mild cold. This leads to a whole series of complications, including the issue of slavery. There are political machinations at work that are not in the best interest of dragons, and Temeraire is hot under the collar...er, ruff...to make right the injustices against his kind and to make people realize that dragons are beings in their own right, not someone else's pet or property. I really enjoy this series and look forward to the next and will be eagerly watching the movie news to see if it is going to be adapted for the big screen. (Peter Jackson has bought the movie rights.) A.
11. GASA-GASA GIRL by Naomi Hirahara #2 Mas Arai mystery. Mas, a 70-year-old owner of his own gardening business in Los Angeles, is off to New York in response to a phone call from his daugher Mari. Something is wrong but he doesn't know what, and Mari isn't sure either, just why she's summoned him after being quite stand-offish for many years. Her husband Lloyd is the gardener for a Japanese museum's grounds and they are working on a major restoration project when the main benefactor is killed. Both Mari and Lloyd are suspected in the shooting death, as is Mas initially, as he is the one who found the body. Mas is lost in New York. Add to the stress of not knowing how things work (the subway, for instance) or where to go, his grandson Takeo (Mari and Lloyd's infant son) is quite ill and is hospitalized while the police are questioning them about the murder. Mas barely knows his daughter, having seen her only briefly in the past ten years since his wife's death from cancer. Despite this, and his typically isolationist lifestyle, his sense of family awakens and wanting to protect her, he--with the help of Tug Yamada, a friend from LA who is also in NY visiting his daughter--investigates some aspects of the case on his own. Mas finds he even rather likes his hakujin son-in-law. Eventually the case is solved, with a bit of a surprise (for me anyway) although I'd figured out parts of it. I enjoy this series, a peek at a culture I have little experience with, and wish there were more, but I believe there's only one book left in this series, and that published in 2006, so it looks as though it may be a dead end. :-( A.
12. PUSS 'N CAHOOTS by Rita Mae Brown (AUDIO) #14 Mrs. Murphy mystery set in Crozet, Virginia, although in this book the crew is off to another part of the state for an equestrian event as Harry accompanies her husband Fair (an equine vet) and also plans to look for a horse to purchase for her friend Alicia Palmer. While attending the events, Harry also visits a good friend Joan and her husband Larry who are horse breeders, and they meet a bunch of the other folks associated with the event, from breeders to the riders entered in the events themselves. When one of the Mexican grooms is brutally murdered during a thunderstorm, speculation runs rampant as to why and who had motive. Of course the animals (tabby cat Mrs. Murphy, gray fat cat Pewter and Tucker, the Welsh Corgi) investigate and have a private war with Miss Nasty, the pet monkey of one of the other riders. I liked this book MUCH better than the last one, but it still doesn't seem to be quite up to par with many of the earlier books in the series. Still, like most cozies, it's about the characters and the settings and it was a nice visit with "the gang" as always, and the reader is very pleasant and easy to listen to as well. B.
13. AND THEN THERE WERE NONE by Agatha Christie. Classic "locked room" mystery (or actually, "isolated island" in this case) written in 1939, with ten people invited to an island off the coast of Devon under false pretenses, each thinking they will be having a holiday, some thinking they're meeting someone known to them, or were recommended by so-and-so, or that they will be employed by Mr. U.N. Owen. Each bedroom in the manor house has a copy of the poem "Ten Little Indians" on the wall, and in one of the downstairs rooms there is a setup with ten Indian figurines--which is appropriate as they are on Indian Island. One by one the guests are killed just as described in the poem and the figurines disappear. As time passes the remaining guests of course conclude that since they can find no trace of their host, that it must be one of them...but who? And why?? This is my all-time favorite mystery. I first enjoyed it at the age of 10 or 12, have read it several times since then, and it was a great pleasure indeed to read it once again, even knowing the solution. Christie was indeed the Mistress of Mystery! A+
14. THE ANGEL'S GAME by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Zafón , the consummate storyteller, returns to Barcelona in his followup to The Shadow of the Wind, although this story takes place years before that, before the main character in TSOTW, Daniel Sempere, is even born. The author has said he plans to write four novels in this setting, all somewhat entwined with a few shared characters and situations, but with stories that are also totally stand-alone. I look forward to them all! This book features David Martin, popular author of 'penny dreadfuls' and suspense novels under the pseudonym Ignatius B. Samson. David, a loner who has been so almost since birth with his mother leaving his father when he was but a child, and his father dying before David reached his teens, finds himself increasingly isolated socially, aside from his enjoyable contacts with Señor Sempere at his bookstore. He is contacted by a mysterious publisher, Andreas Corelli, to write a book for him. The book is to be a story that will inspire a new religion and he will be paid an exorbitant amount of money to write it, paid up front. He agrees, and then David, who has been told he has an inoperable brain tumor, is cured and begins facing his life with a new vigor. After some time working on his book, he begins to see frightening parallels to a book he plucked from the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, and the author who wrote it many years before. While this is happening, his obsession with Cristina, the daughter of the chauffeur of his mentor, Pedro Vidal, grows stronger and becomes dangerous when she marries Vidal himself. Betrayed once again, David's life spirals downward as he still obsessively works on his masterpiece. While similar in style to The Shadow of the Wind, this novel is darker, more overtly violent, and has more supernatural elements to it. I liked it....no, I loved it. Zafón's lyrical, richly textured writing makes his telling of the story a delight to read--even though many times the circumstances the protagonist is in make the story itself painful. This is *not* The Shadow of the Wind reprised. It is less, and yet it is more. There are many dangling loose ends that make you wonder, and I can't help but hope that some of these threads will be grabbed and woven into another tale in the other books planned for Zafón's Barcelona. Another for the Keeper shelf! A+
15. THE BLUE LAST by Martha Grimes. (AUDIO) #17 Richard Jury/Melrose Plant mystery. Jury's policeman friend Mickey Haggerty, whom he's not seen in a number of years, asks to meet him, but upon reacquainting himself with Mickey, discovers it's not a problematic case that has Haggerty calling on Scotland Yard, but a personal case that he wants Jury to look into 'off the record.' Puzzled by the request, Mickey confides that he has a rare form of leukemia and has only months to live, and although he's the officer in charge of the murder of Simon Croft, he has a personal interest in the case as his father had been friends with Croft years previously, and he believes that there is a mystery buried in the past that may be linked to Croft's death. Croft had been writing a book about the war period and since his notes and the book's manuscript were stolen, that some detail that Croft uncovered from that time could be something that someone wanted hushed up. Jury is loathe to go back to explore the details of the past, particularly the Blitz, during which his own mother was killed, but can hardly refuse a dying friend. The Blue Last is the name of the pub where events during the Blitz tie to the present. Meanwhile, Melrose and Trueblood are off to Italy to attempt to authenticate a painting, and upon his return, Jury asks him to pose as a gardener in a rich family's home associated with his case. Although some folks don't like this foray away from the actual cases, I do enjoy Melrose's adventures with his friends in Long Piddlington and this one was especially good. I do have to say though, that I did NOT like the reader for this book. Although he did a very good reading, he totally made Melrose sound like a pretentious git with the snotty, posh accent he gave him--which is not at all how Melrose is. AND he mispronounced Melrose's butler's name, Ruthven--I remember this because in a previous book there was much discussion about just how it was supposed to be said. Argh! I have the next few here in print and I believe I will stick with those, since the readers for the series seem to change with each book, and who knows what the quality of the next one would be. I enjoyed this story despite the reader (which is the reason for the slight markdown in the grading) and was very surprised by the ending, for a nice change too! A-.
16. MAGIC STUDY by Maria V. Snyder #2 in the "Study" fantasy series featuring Yelena, a young woman with magic powers who had been kidnapped from her home in Sitia as a child and kept in a prison in Ixia, then used as the ruler's food taster. When the government changes hands and she is banished, she returns to the home she's not seen since the age of six, only to find that her welcome is a bit thin with her brother Leif accusing her of being a spy. She longs to spend time getting reacquainted with her parents and extended family, but must set out to enroll in the Citadel, where she will learn to control and use her magic. There she learns that some sort of tribal serial killer is on the loose, and that not everyone there is very welcoming, either, with one of the Master Magicians wanting her to be put to death as a spy as well. After a mind-reading assures them that she has no intention of spying, Yelena sets out to learn her lessons while plotting how to catch the serial killer. This book was okay, but I didn't particularly like it as much as the first one, which really intrigued me. The author has a great writing style, and it's easy to read and has an engaging tone. But this book has more of a romancey feel to it, and I thought Yelena in many respects to have lost her appeal as a strong female character and become something of a silly girl prone to making stupid decisions. I probably will at least attempt to read the third one, simply because I have it already, but I'm dubious as to how much appeal it will have for me if the storyline continues in this vein. C+
17. A SUMMER OF DISCONTENT by Susanna Gregory. #8 Matthew Bartholomew historical mystery set in 1350's Cambridge, UK. Matthew (a physician and professor at Michaelhouse College at Cambridge University) and his friend Michael (a monk and also an agent of the Bishop of Ely) are off to Ely at a summons from the Bishop. Matt is accompanying his friend but hopes to spend time in the library at the Priory there to gather more information for the treatise on fevers he's working on. Of course, upon arrival, they discover that the Bishop has summoned Michael because he is accused of murder and wants Michael to investigate and have him exonerated. Michael, not at all sure in his heart of hearts that his boss is innocent, investigates, often times asking Matt to tag along to offer his professional opinion, so Matt doesn't get as much studying done as he would like. When two other deaths that had been presumed accidents are tied to the first death (after Matt's examination of the bodies) the number of suspects skyrockets as none of the dead were liked by the townspeople nor the clergy involved. Of course they eventually (after a long and twisty course of events and much visiting and re-visiting the various suspects) find the killer, who was not a surprise to me. I enjoy these mysteries but the last couple especially seem to have become a bit too long with quite a lot of repetition and needless foraying back and forth, covering the same materials over and over. Still, it's been many months since I had a visit to medieval Cambridge and did enjoy this one, even if it was a bit long-winded. B+
18. THE LACE READER by Brunonia Barry. (AUDIO) Towner Whitney has come home to Salem, Massachussetts, responding appropriately when her brother calls to let her know that her 85-year-old great-aunt Eva is missing. She hasn't been home for fifteen years, and the town is full of harsh memories for her--most notably, her twin sister Lynley's suicide when they were seventeen years old. Lynley had been given to her aunt and uncle at birth as they were unable to conceive, and Towner had
never quite forgiven her mother for that, especially when her uncle Cal turned out to be a drunk and abuser, who beat his wife and sexually abused his adoptive daughter, and who has now 'found God' and become the leader of an extremist religion hell-bent on persecuting witches. Towner is a 'reader' as many of the Whitney women are--intuitives, reading people's thoughts and intentions, and specifically having the talent of reading lace, the way some read tea leaves. Towner's mother May runs a
women's shelter on Yellow Dog Island where the women are taught to make Ipswitch lace by hand; they are not close, and Towner (whose birth name was Sophya, but she refused to respond to that at some point in her childhood) spent her last months with Eva in town. Towner has lived in California for many years, having undergone serious and prolonged psychiatric therapy, including ECT (electro-shock therapy) which has left her with gaps in her memory. So when she comes home, her fragile mental health takes a tumble backward as the memories assault her, complicated by her attempts to recover from a recent hysterectomy and the cop investigating Eva's disappearance, John Rafferty, who finds himself falling in love with Towner. A multi-layered story that shifts back and forth in time with an interesting plot twist that, I have to admit, I did see coming about halfwaythrough the book. Skillfully written, a compelling story that gives you a real sense of place in modern-day Salem (where the author lives) as well as an intimate look into the world of mental illness. With elements of magic, this will probably not appeal to those who aren't fans of "woo woo" but if you don't mind a bit of the supernatural, you'll find this a wonderful and compelling story. I wondered whether there are such a thing as 'lace readers' but it seems that it's a figment of the author's imagination with no historical record of it. Very enjoyable listen, read by one of my favorite readers, Alyssa Bresnahan. I'll definitely be looking out for more by this author--it's hard to believe this is a first novel. A+
19. 47 RULES OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE BANK ROBBERS by Troy Cook. A wacky ride across the southwest begins with father-daughter bankrobbing team Wyatt and Tara pulling off a couple of major jobs. Tara, who's been helping her father rob banks since before her age was in double digits always disguised as a male, has begun to become decidedly less than happy with her father's choice of careers for her. Although she adheres to Wyatt's rules of crime, he's become increasingly violent and seems to thrive on the killing almost more than the money from the bank jobs, and Tara's getting tired of it. When she sees young Max Williams (of course he's a sheriff's son, though Tara doesn't know it yet!) in a bar in the town they're scouting for the next job, something comes alive for the 22-year-old, but Wyatt (as always) practically kills the young man as he does anyone who looks twice at his lovely daughter. And Max, smitten himself, certainly DID look. And then it happens--Max turns up at the bank
during the job and Tara doesn't follow Rule #47. The final rule: When in Doubt, Take 'em Out. She lets him get away--and when her father takes her to task for it later, she snaps and breaks up their little team, clocking a drunken Wyatt a good one and
leaving him naked with some of the money in their hotel room. She hooks up with Max and away they go, not realizing that some of Tara and Wyatt's ex-partners, having recognized Wyatt's voice on the sound bit on the surveillance video played on the
news, are now after them and their share of the cash. Add to the mix the sleazy, perverted FBI agent who ignores his much smarter subordinate and gets off on watching the blood and gore of the surveillance tapes and you've got a right ribald mix of "interesting things" just waiting to happen--and happen they did! This was a highly original work that I mostly liked a lot, but the fact that I was tempted to skim through several parts of it leads me to think that the execution of the idea was just not quite spot on, although I can't pin down just why not. Perhaps it was just too many wacky characters to try to keep tabs on, or the dearth of so-called "normal" folks for them to play off of, I don't know. The book was laugh out loud funny in spots, yet other parts seemed to have humor that was just a little forced. All in all though, an enjoyable read and an author I look forward to reading more of. B+
Current reads:
DNF: THE BLACK WIDOW AGENCY by Felicia Donovan. I gave it 50 pages, but while the concept was quite interesting, the characters were stereotypical and two-dimensional and the book read like a recitation, like pieces of dry, boring prose stacked together rather than woven skillfully into a story I could care about. NEXT!
DNF: THE ANTEATER OF DEATH by Betty Webb. Another one I'm glad I got from the library. I've enjoyed a couple of mysteries in another series this author did, but this is apparently her try at a cozy and it really doesn't work. It's set in a zoo, with the main character (can't even recall her name now, although she had four or five of them...Theodora Something Something Something....Teddy, that's right....) as one of the zookeepers and a Giant Anteater accused of the murder. I yawned my way through about 35 pages and decided to let it go back to the library.
Cheryl
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