Garment of Shadows

I really like this series by Laurie King, featuring the semi-retired Sherlock Holmes and his young wife, Mary Russell. Mary is a formidable character in her own right and the story is told from her perspective. She wakes up with no memory of who she is or how she came to be in a small room in what she eventually determines is the town of Fez, Morocco. But soldiers are pounding on the downstairs door and she realizes, to her horror, that she has dried blood on her hands. Making her escape, she vanishes into the souk and discovers she has talents that no ordinary woman should have--for picking pockets and locks, for disguise as a man, for Arabic language... Holmes meanwhile has just found out that Mary is missing and is searching frantically for her when he gets embroiled in political intrigues that could cause Morocco, currently administered by the French in the south and the Spanish in the north, to explode in civil war. As always, King delivers up well-drawn characters, well-researched history, fascinating period details, and a great plot. Excerpts are available on Laurie King's web site.

Vulture Peak

Jon Burdett's novels about Thailand and southeast Asia in general are always fascinating, often gruesome, and yet thought provoking. This fifth in a series that features Buddhist detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep focuses on the exploding trade in human organs and all the vices that you can imagine--and some you probably would not--in connection with the attaining and selling of same. His common law marriage to former prostitute Chanya is somewhat on the rocks; there are rumors she has a lover and Sonchai himself finds his attentions wandering. He is sorely tempted by one particular woman who seems to be at the heart of two overlapping cases, one involving a serial rapist and the other the organ trafficking empire of some very beautiful and very powerful Chinese twins. I devoured the first three in this series (Bangkok 8, Bangkok Tatoo, and Bangkok Haunts) and when I started this, realized I had missed the fourth (The Godfather of Kathmandu) which I will certainly go back and fill in. I also really like The Last Six Million Seconds--another book outside the series about the handover of Hong Kong. These books are gritting and compelling perspectives of the sex trade and corruption of the police in Thailand, but certainly don't entice me to want to visit. This is definitely armchair travel that will stay in the armchair. Kirkus offers more details of the plot.

The End of Your Life Book Club

Although it sounds a bit grim, this is really a fascinating book about the "book club" formed by author Will Schwalbe and his mother Mary Anne in the last couple years of her life. Both were already avid readers. This is ostensibly about the power of books to change lives--no argument from me there--but is really more an homage to a remarkable woman. There were some things that really struck me about books in general, such as how physical books demand attention, whereas electronic books are essentially invisible; that is, a stack of books on your bedside or living room side table perpetually reminds you of what you intend to read. An electronic book disappears when you turn off the reader. I haven't made the leap to e-books although I gave my husband a Kindle Touch. I just added this to my reasons not to change ;-) Schwalbe also talks about the etiquette of dealing with someone who is dying--how you need to remember the past, celebrate the present and mourn the future all at the same time. How not to be intrusive or dismissive. There is, in fact, some discussion about books and what they took from their shared reading and discussion of them. The book includes a list of all the books discussed, although indexing this to the pages where the book was discussed would have been even better. A longer review from the NYT is here.