Still LIfe

Oh boy I am in love with a new writer and can hardly wait to read more in the Inspector Gamache series. Still Life is the first featuring said protagonist by Louise Penny, set in the idyllic village of Three Pines, somewhat south of Montreal and just north of the U.S.-Canadian border. Inspector Gamache, of the Surete du Quebec, is called in to investigate what appears at first to be a hunting accident, except that no one has stepped forward to admit the fatal mistake. Jane Neal, retired school teacher and perhaps unrevealed artist, was beloved by all--or was she? Inspector Gamache methodically observes, quietly directs his team to investigate, and comes to the conclusion that this was no accident. The town is lovingly portrayed--I wanted to move there right away--with a diverse and well-drawn cast of characters. Inspector Gamache is a policeman with intelligence and integrity who surrounds himself with like-minded officers when at all possible. His insistence on following his conscience has apparently landed him in hot water with his superiors at the Surete and put some significant limits on his career advancement. Nevertheless, he adores his wife, has subordinate who admire and value him, and seems a contented man overall, rather than a tortured soul like one of my other thinking woman's mystery series' protagonists (Adam Dalgliesh mysteries, by P.D.James). One of the village locals, a retired psychologist and now used-book store owner (what a dream!) is used by Penny to reveal Gamache's penchant for understanding the motivation of crime. I've already ordered the next book, A Fatal Grace/ Dead Cold.

Changeless

This second installment in the "Parasol Protectorate" by Gail Carriger finds Alexia Tarabotti now firmly ensconced as Lady Maccon and Muhjuh to Queen Victoria. Something very strange is going on because all the supernaturals in a part of London have lost their powers. Vampires and werewolves are suddenly mortal and the ghosts they rely on for information have all been exorcised. This epidemic or weapon becomes the focus of Alexia's and her husband's investigations and takes them to Scotland, his former home. We learn about his former pack and why he left them, bereft of an alpha--a seemingly unforgivable act. We meet his great great great grandaughter who desperately wants to be converted and tries to enlist Alexia's help to convince Connall to do it. We also meet a mysterious female French scientist, Madame Lefoux, commissioned by Lord Maccon to create an extraordinary parasol for Alexia, who dresses like a man and seems quite attracted to Alexia. You really need to read the first book, Soulless, to have a good handle on this one,  and you will be rewarded by greater depth of characterization and an engrossing storyline here. The wonderful cast of ancillary characters--Lord Akeldama, Miss Hisselpenny, Professor Lyall-- are all still present and accounted for. This book qualifies as steampunk with its infatuation with machanical, pseudo-scientific gizmos and machines. Alexia takes her first, and almost fatal, trip in a dirigible and learns to operate an aetherograph machine. There is a twist in the plot at the end that surprise and distress you--fortunately the sequel, Blameless, is already in the works.

Sizzling Sixteen

Nothing unpredictable in the newest Stephanie Plum episode and it's apparently pissing off a lot of series readers. Grandma Mazer is a little more subdued than usual in this episode and even the Joe - Stephanie and Ranger - Stephanie dynamics are a little in the background. I also wish she would just pick one of them and get on with it, but it doesn't happen here. Of course Stephanie messes up cars and ends up in totally ridiculous situations trying to retrieve FTA's. But this time the focus is on rescuing her boss, Vinnie, who has been a colorful but relatively unimportant character heretofore. Vinnie has been kidnapped by people to whom he is deeply in debt and they are threatening to kill him if Connie, Lula and Stephanie don't come up with a million plus dollars. So they set out to rob the bad guys in order to pay off the bad guys and hopefully not get caught at it. They depend on buckets of fried chicken to lure away guard alligators and Connie's tried and true stink bombs. Just the usual stuff in Trenton, New Jersey. Ranger's got her back the entire time so we never have to really worry...just go along for the ride and have a good time.

Lost Lake

This is one of Philip Margolin's twisty thrillers with a complicated set of characters and motivations, and a storyline that spins back and forth across several decades of time to weave a tapestry of conspiracy. A congressman is brutally murdered at his home in Lost Lake, California and his congressional aide and houseguest, Vanessa Kohler, walks in on the scene. She recognizes an old high school friend, Carl Rice, as the slayer and runs screaming from the house. Rice disappears--only to resurface more than two decades later in Portland, Oregon, under a different name, as an off-the-grid itinerant fine furniture maker. Single mom and new attorney, Amy Vergano, is impressed with his mild manner and quality work at a craft fair where they share neighboring booths, and she volunteers to rent a garage apartment to him when he mentions needing a place to stay. He becomes a positive role model in her son's life and so Amy is shocked when an argument at a little league game turns violent and nearly deadly because of this same man. Meanwhile back in Washington, DC, the news coverage alerts Vanessa that the man she thought long dead is still alive, and may be her only key to proving that her father, General Wingate, ran a clandestine and illegal team of assassins during the Vietnam war and afterwards. He is now a candidate for President and she has written a book warning people of his past activities. However, no one really believes Vanessa's stories, and no publisher will accept the manuscript, because word is out that she was confined to a mental institution after witnessing the murder, and that now she works as a tabloid reporter. She heads to Oregon to try and talk to Carl and to ask Amy to defend him in the upcoming trial. More people die, and certainly Carl has killed in his past, but everyone is being manipulated into believing something other than the truth.

Girl who Kicked the Hornets Nest

Stieg Larsson does not let us down in this third installment featuring Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist. In fact, he spares us the usual red herrings that characterized the first two books and keeps everything relentlessly focused on the powerful machinations to sweep Zalachenko and his inconvenient daughter under the rug. That's not to say that there aren't subplots a plenty, e.g., Erika Berger's move to head a major newspaper initiates a series of stalker episodes, and Salander's half-brother is also the object of a police manhunt and far from being out of the picture. But the storyline around Erika results in a truce with Salander and makes Berger a much more three dimensional character than previously. Mikael stubbornly and resourcefully continues to probe the extensive and deadly cover-up that now has Lisbeth at its center. With his help, and the help of other allies (Palmgren, Armansky), Salander once again uses her unique talents to topple those who would abuse power at the expense of the seemingly powerless. The lingering question is, what will Salander do with herself when she no longer has to spend all her time fighting to survive...

Dark Tort

I think I have outgrown Diane Mott Davidson. Her books are like the comfort food protagonist, caterer Goldy Bear Schultz, makes in each episode of the series. She has a likable family at the center of this series--Sheriff's Dept investigator and husband Tom, son Arch, catering whiz and partner Julian, and a  new half-brother to Arch-- with a trusty best friend Marla. She always does a decent job of creating her Aspen Meadows setting near Boulder, Colorado, and Goldie always solves the crime ahead of the officials who don't have her penchant for poking her nose in where it could get her in trouble. One evening as Goldie goes into a local law firm to help prepare foods for an early morning breakfast for clients, she trips over the body of the firm's paralegal and Goldy's neighbor, Dusty Routt. Distraught at losing her young friend, Goldy is asked by the girl's mother to find out who did it. She claims the law firm where Dusty worked was a "nest of vipers." The story also involves a recently deceased chef and painter whose wild success as an artist barely preceded his diagnosis with pancreatic cancer. But his demise is from what is assumed to be an accidental fall. Another apparently random death gets pulled into the mix before this is all over. If you like mysteries with tasty recipe thrown in, this is for you. They just move a little too slow--without enough compensation in character or setting, etc.--to make these worthwhile for me anymore. Of course I have read at least half a dozen so take my grumping with a grain of salt.

Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident

This book series for young adults by Eoin Colfer is an absolute hoot. The Arctic Incident is book 2 in the series and you will seriously struggle with some of the relationships between characters if you haven't read the first book, just called Artemis Fowl. In that book, 12-year old Fowl, a criminal mastermind, decides to go after the gold of the fairies, but has to outwit Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon (Lower Elements Police Reconnaisance) Unit. In this book, the fairies and the "Mud People" (i.e., humans) have to team up to solve a crime that involves smuggling batteries from the upper world to the lower world. If Artemis can help them track down the source of the batteries, which are being used to power now outlawed weapons in the lower world, then they might use some fairy magic to help Artemis find and rescue his father, who he has reason to believe is still alive. If you enjoy a little supernatural flavor and some tongue in cheek humor, you can't go wrong with these books.

Death of a Maid

My dear great aunt in Caldwell was kind enough to let us borrow some audio books on her account for the drive to Bend and then on home to LV. I love listening to the Hamish Macbeth books by M.C. Beaton because the readers have such wonderful accents. This one had a good plot dealing with, not surprisingly, a cleaning woman--Mrs. Gillespie-- who nobody liked but kept employing nevertheless, until someone hit her over the head with her own mop bucket. Her husband was joyous and immediately went into remission from his cancer. Her daughter was reunited with a husband after a divorce which her mother had precipitated. Hamish is pursuing leads and hunches, joined occasionally by former flame Elspeth who has come home for a visit. At the same time he is trying to avoid anyone figuring out that he is the one making progress, because to be noticed means potentially to be promoted, which would mean leaving his beloved Lochdubh. The suspects are thick on the ground for it turns out that not only was she an unpleasant woman, but she was also a nosy person who used what she found to blackmail her clients. Hamish remains resolutely a bachelor even though at one point he goes out and buys Elspeth an engagement ring. Poor Elspeth, having despaired of Hamish ever asking, accepts a marriage proposal from a fellow reporter who jilts her at the altar. Hamish's cat and dog, Lugs and Sonsie play a central role in Hamish's life and always add a quirky element to the tales of this quirky anti-hero. There is a rather distracting side plot in this book, after the main murder is solved, involving a crime lord trying to have Hamish killed. Of course Hamish turns this to advantage, too, capturing the criminal and several of his henchmen--but giving the credit to another inspector from Inverness. A fun listen/read as are all the books inthis series.

Undone

I've not followed Karin Slaughter's work though her name comes up often in the realm of police procedurals/crime fiction and she has a lot of fans. The characters of Undone are quirky and interesting: two agents with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Will and Faith, both come from bad childhoods. Will is dyslexic and Sara had a kid while still a kid herself. They apparently appeared in a number of her other books (e.g., Fractured). In this one, Faith passes out inexplicably and is taken to the hospital where we encounter another character from a different Slaughter book (Faithless), the on call emergency doctor Sara Linton. Sara is a widow; her dead husband was a cop, and she is damaged goods. In fact, they all are, but more endearing for all of that.  Faith, it turns out, is pregnant and going into full-blown diabetes and she's having a hard time with both diagnoses. The three are brought back together when a horribly tortured woman is brought into the emergency room and it starts to look like she's only one in a string of victims. Personally, I had a hard time with all the grisly details of the torture, although told from a forensic perspective rather than from the serial killer's, they were off-putting. Enter with caution.

Two by Harlan Coben

Coben is a solid mystery writer with tricky plots and a regular cast of characters that reappear in many of his books. So it felt like a lucky find to run across one of his paperbacks in the trading library at the resort on Crete. The Woods revolves around a cold case involving 4 teenagers who disappeared into the area surrounding a co-ed summer camp and presumably all died. Except two of them were never found. One of the missing ones was  the sister of our protagonist, Paul Copeland, who also happens to be the county prosecutor in Essex County, NJ . Old memories are stirred up when a murdered man with Paul's card in his pockets, is tentatively identified by Paul as the other missing teen from that night long ago. Does that mean his sister could also be alive?  And did we mention that Paul had been one of the counselors in charge at the camp the night the murders and disappearances took place, and that he hasn't seen or heard from the girl he sneaked off with that night in all these years, until now?    

Long Lost is one I listened to on our travels to and from Bend a couple weeks ago. Myron Bolitar, sports agent (and a regular fixture of many Coben novels) gets a 5 am wake-up call from a long-lost love, Teresa Collins, inviting him to Paris for a few fun filled days, “'Think about it,” she went on. “The City of Lights. We could make love all night long'...What’s wrong, Terese?'... 'Nothing’s wrong.  I want to spend a romantic, sensual, fantasy-filled weekend with you in Paris.'Another swallow. 'I haven’t heard from you in, what, seven years?" But indeed something is very wrong. Her husband is missing and eventually turns up--dead. Events start to make it look like the daughter she thought died years ago in a car wreck might not be dead. But it's oh so much more complicated than this. It's all about a plot to grow terrorists who can go anywhere because they look just like...well, read it and find out.
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The King Must Die

An oldie but goodie by Mary Renault and another gift from my sis-in-law in honor of our Greece trip. It does give you a whole other perspective on viewing ruins that are thousands of years old to think of people actually living, loving, working in those places. For those of you not familiar, this is Renault's version of the Theseus legend. Was he the son of the god Poseidon? or of mortal king Aigeus and priestess Aithra. The story goes that Theseus was sent to Crete as part of Athens tribute--usually 7 girls and 7 boys--which was paid to avoid having Crete attack them. The youths were sent to the "Bull Court" where they "danced" with the bulls and usually didn't live very long, although they often lived well. The frescoes recovered from Knossos show the bull dancers. In the legend, Theseus manages to navigate the labyrinth and defeat the minotaur--half man, half bull--and sail home. But he forgets to change the colors of his sails to white. When his father the king spies the returning ships with dark sails, he despairs at his lost son and throws himself down the cliff to his death. In Renault's version, Theseus has already become a king in his own right by the time he volunteers to become part of Athen's tribute. He finds the Cretans have fallen away from the gods and become bored and irreverent, hence their eventual demise is inevitable. Knossos, once a city of 100,000 people according to historians, was in fact wiped out, perhaps by a tidal wave resulting from a cataclysmic volcanic explosion on Thera, followed by invasion by the Myceneans. There is no agreed upon explanation for the decline of a robust civilization that lasted for over 1600 years.