Pretty Is

My friend Wendy Starkweather's niece, Maggie Mitchell, wrote this--her first novel. So  I approached it with both a bit of extra curiosity and apprehension. What if I didn't like it--what does one say? Fortunately, it was a really intriguing book, not exactly a thriller, but more a psychological exhumation.
Two 12-year old girls, whose paths would otherwise never have crossed, are both abducted by the same handsome charming man and kept for almost two months at a rundown lodge deep in the woods. Carly May, from a small town in Nebraska is exceptionally pretty and her step-mother seeks to get attention for herself by promoting Carly May to be in beauty pageants. Tiny attractive Lois is precociously smart and is kidnapped miles away in Connecticut. Each girl is notable in her own way but very different from each other. It's never entirely clear to the girls or the reader why they were chosen. But the fact that they were seems to exert a psychological hold over both girls and they never seriously try to escape. Two stories--then and now-- are told from each girl's/ woman's perspective in alternating chapters,  starting when both women are adults. Carly--now Chloe Savage--is a B-level actress in Los Angeles; while, former spelling bee champ Lois is teaching literature at a small college in upstate New York. Under a pseudonym, Lois has written a book, a fictionalized account of two girls who are kidnapped, that is popular enough to have been optioned for a movie. She has worked hard to separate herself from that past as has Carly/ Chloe. But a student in one of Lois' classes has ferreted out the connection and begins subtly blackmailing Lois to keep from revealing her identity. Predictably, Chloe is tapped to play a role in the movie and their lives once again collide. Coherent characters, well-crafted settings, and a slightly disturbing sense of mystery will keep you engrossed in this book.
Good reviews from The Guardian, Kirkus, and The New York Times.

A Cotswold Killing

First of the "Cotswold Mysteries" by Rebecca Tope, the protagonist is 42-year-old and recently widowed Thea Osborne, who has decided to try out house sitting to  keep herself occupied and bring in a little extra money. Along with her spaniel, Hepzibah, she has taken a job in the village of Duntisbourne Abbots looking after not only a lovely home, but a couple of dogs, and a small herd of sheep. On her first night she awakens to a scream, but because the dogs don't bark and the security lights don't come on, she assumes it is just a fox calling and goes back to sleep. While out walking the next day, however, she finds a body in the creek and it turns out to be a neighboring farmer, Joel Jamison--one of the only village people to have stopped by and said hello when she arrived. We find out that the deceased's brother was found dead in the same field just 6 weeks earlier. Thea is curious how this could possibly happen in such a small, close-knit community. As she begins to learn more about the neighbors, however, she finds lots of history, secrets, grievances, and underlying tensions. Quite a colorful cast of characters and, since I love the Cotswolds, I enjoyed the setting as well.  Solid "English cozy" fare. I've read a couple other books of Tope's, a later book from this series, and the first in her "West Country mysteries," A Dirty Death. Tope was also the ghost writer for one of my favorite British TV mystery series, Rosemary and Thyme. 
Kirkus has written reviews of several of her books, although not this one.

Grave Doubts

This is the third in Elizabeth Corley's "Inspector Fenwick" series. Fenwick has just returned from a secondment to the Met and is trying to catch up with  current cases. The big news is that Sargeant Louise Nightingale was used as bait to catch a serial rapist/ killer and, although she is back at work, she is having second thoughts about staying with the police. Her feelings for Fenwick she assumes are unreciprocated and it is emotionally painful to work around him, although it is clear he thinks she is a good detective and feels protective of her. Fenwick persuades her to take a leave of absence rather than resigning and she retreats to a crumbling old house in Devon that once belonged to her aunt but has been derelict for years. She tells no one where she is going, and since she has no cell service there, she is largely out of touch with her former colleagues. So unbeknownst to her, the rapes and murders have started again, even though the person they are sure was responsible is in prison. Fenwick digs deeper and concludes that there have been two people involved in the serial crimes and it seems likely that the one who is still free has targeted Nightingale as revenge for putting his partner in jail.
Surprisingly, Corley is a well known financial executive and yet manages to write these novels in her spare time. The characters are interesting and the settings are well described. This is primarily a plot-driven book and it is certainly tense and engaging. A good read for those who like this genre.

The English Monster

I tried to read this debut novel by journalist Lloyd Shepherd but just could not persist. Two stories are taking place in alternating chapters. There are the real-life murders of two families in 1811 London near the docks of Wapping, frequently called the Ratcliffe Highway murders. An officer in the newly formed Thames River Police, Charles Horton, is trying to solve the case and thus tamp down rising public hysteria. The second story line takes place in 1564 and features a young man, Billy Ablass, who seeks to make enough money to marry and have a home by serving on one of Queen Elizabeth's ships--the first slaving ship.
I'm sure they must connect at some point. Maybe I will try again later.
Summary and reviews from The Financial Times, The Guardian, and The Independent.

A Man Called Ove

This debut novel by Fredrik Backman was turned down by numerous publishers before finally being bought and has now become an international best seller. As is too often the case, I was lukewarm while  others rave about it. The premise is that Ove is a committed curmudgeon with a hidden heart of gold.  The outcomes are predictable. Behind his grumpy exterior is the painful loss of Ove's wife, Sonja, 6 months ago and now he has lost the will to live. In a touch of black humor, Ove keeps devising new ways to kill himself but is constantly being interrupted by neighbors dealing with the problems of living. He adopts the abused feral cat, he helps out the immigrant neighbor, Parvana, when her inept husband falls and breaks a leg, he intervenes when social services try to remove another neighbor to a care facility. Eventually he has reconnected with enough people that life again takes on promise. It is a nice story, apparently has been made into a movie. The text has a distinctly Scandinavian flavor but is much lighter fare than the predominantly noir novels that usually make it here.

There are lots of reviews including The New York Times, and Kirkus. And if you want to know how to pronounce the title, go to the video clip on the publisher's website.

Tricky Twenty-Two

Any of you who are Janet Evanovich fans will recognize the title as the latest in her "Stephanie Plum" series, featuring a not terribly competent bond enforcement agent who tracks down clients who have skipped on their bail. Set in New Jersey with lots of local color as well asnvery colorful characters, readers have come to know and love, including Grandma Mazur, who refuses to act her age, Lula, former 'ho and Stephanie's sidekick, and of course the hot and sexy men in her life, Ranger and Morelli.
At the start of the book, Morelli tells Stephanie that he needs a little time away from the relationship and she is hurt and confused, even more so when he says he is thinking of leaving the police department. She is trying to figure out what is going on with him. This time Stephanie is after a college kid who supposedly broke the dean's arm in a scuffle over fraternity pranks. But it turns out to be much more complicated to find him than she imagine for he has gone into hiding. Someone is keeping secrets in the basement of the fraternity house and they might be very deadly.
 As usual, Stephanie destroys cars, has to have Ranger bail her out of numerous confrontations with big bad FTA's, and goes to her parents' house for dinner when all else fails. Rex the hamster is still alive (the most long-lived hamster ever). Stephanie's mom gets a taste for chasing bad guys and likes it. Just the usual predictably zany antics strung together in a well-constructed "who done it" mystery. I think Lula gets some of the best lines this time around. 

Every Fifteen Minutes

This stand-alone thriller from Lisa Scottoline features psychologist Dr. Eric Parrish who runs the psychiatric unit at the general hospital. Dr. Parish also sees a few private clients at his home office. He has recently separated from his wife and is surprised to find she has sold their house, even though their verbal agreement was that she would live there with their daughter, Hannah, to minimize the trauma of the divorce. He also finds out that his wife is pushing Hannah to participate in sports, which she abhors, and that his ex-wife has a new boyfriend who seems to be living at their house. He decides to file for primary custody of their daughter.
Meanwhile, on a referral from a friend and colleague in the ER, he starts seeing a very troubled teen, Max, a math whiz, whose primary caretaker, his grandmother, is imminently terminal. Eric learns that Max has an obsessive crush on a girl and has actually kept a cell phone she left behind at a math tutoring session. As Eric debates whether or not to warm the girl, she is murdered and Eric initially becomes the prime suspect. Then attention quickly shifts to Max and Scottoline leads the reader on with lots of other information that suggest Max is the killer. Eric is unconvinced and wants to support Max. Meanwhile, however, he is dealing with professional issues as a woman intern on the psych unit has filed sexual harassment charges, the wife of a patient is filing suit with the hospital for what she considers to be the mistreatment of her husband as a patient on the psych ward,  and a fire starts on the unit.
Little does Eric realize that he is actually the target of a sociopath's intention to destroy him personally and professionally. There are no clues as to who hates Eric this intently and he eventually finds that his allies may be his worst enemies.
I have read a lot of Scottoline's other books, both her individual novels and her "Rosato and Associates" series about a women-owned law firm, and she never disappoints. She is a fine writer. However, I was a little annoyed that the reader was so clearly being led to believe Max was the killer; it seemed a bit overdone to me. Minor gripe, however.

The Fifth Season

Another new author to me, N. K. Jemison is referred to as a "speculative fiction" writer of short stories and novels, many of which have received literary nominations and awards. The Fifth Season, the first part of her "Broken Earth" series,  won The 2016 Hugo Award. One of the common themes of her writing is oppression and this book is no exception. People oppressing others because they are different and mostly because they are afraid, should certainly resonate in our current political climate. This description of The Fifth Season's precipitating events, from Jemison's own website, sums it up more succinctly than I could.
"Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Meanwhile, mighty Sanze — the world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization’s bedrock for a thousand years — collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman’s vengeance. And worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries."
Essun goes in search of her missing daughter, trying to navigate a broken world, and a rapidly deteriorating social order where her kind--the Orogenes--are trained and used, or killed, but above all, feared.
There's a great review by Naomi Novik (see my post on her novel, Uprooted) in the New York Times. Also good reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and NPR.

Third Grave Dead Ahead

If you follow my blog, you will quickly realize this is the 3rd installment in Darynda Jones' "Charley Davidson" series, which I really enjoy when I want a little light reading with a kick-ass female protagonist and a dose of the supernatural (for other books like that see Gail Carriger, Charlaine Harris, Patricia Briggs, Kim Harrison, etc.). For a little more background on Charley Davidson, aka The Grim Reaper, you can also read my earlier posts.
Fueled by gallons of caffeine, Charley has gone days without sleep--on purpose--because every time she goes to sleep, handsome and sexy son of Satan, Reyes Farrow, invades her dreams and he seems pretty upset with her. Maybe it is because she bound his spirit to his human body just when he was trying to leave it, and now he is back in jail. He tells her he is sure that the man he was convicted of killing, his sadistically abusive foster father is actually alive and Charley is determined to find him and free Reyes. The self-induced insomnia is making Charley a little crazy, however, and she jumps at the chance to find a "missing wife" even though she can sense that her client, the husband is guilty as sin about something. In the process, she checks in with Rocket, her one-stop fount of info regarding all those who have "passed," has a falling out with her ex-detective dad who wants her to stop being a PI, and helps a biker gang avenge the death of one of their dogs.

Midnight in Europe

I am so far behind in posting my book blogs that none of these recent ones are in chronological order. This novel by Alan Furst, an author called by Vince Flynn "the most talented espionage novelist of our generation," and lauded by the NYT as "America's  preeminent spy novelist," is set during the run-up to WWII as Spain tears itself apart in a civil war. A lawyer for a well-respected law firm in Paris with offices in New York City, Christian Ferrar, is himself a refugee from Spain along with his family. So when he is approached by someone from the Spanish embassy in Paris to aid the Spanish Republic in procuring weapons to fight Franco's Fascists, he barely hesitates. He knows that if the nationalists win and the Nazi expansion continues, his new home in Paris will no longer be safe. With the silent blessing of his law firm he works  legal and not so legal avenues to funnel weapons into Spain from any country who will help the opponents of Franco. The characters in this novel (and apparently in Furst's novel generally) are not super-heroes, but ordinary people responding to extraordinary times, and I learned a some about this particular convulsion in a Europe on the eve of world war. However, it felt oddly as though there was no real  conclusion....realistic, perhaps, but a bit anti-climactic. In spite of all efforts, Franco's forces won and Ferrar moved his family to New York. I might read more of Furst's books just because I enjoy this genre (espionage and historical novels) as well as the quality of his writing, characterization and settings. He excels at evoking the unspoken tension and paranoia that gripped Europe during Hitler's rise to power. A balanced review from the New York Times elucidates this particular book's strengths and weaknesses. Also a good brief review from Kirkus, and the reviewer at the Boston Globe says he has read every one of Furst's novels twice!

Lethal Treasure

This is the 8th entry in the "Josie Prescott Antique Mysteries" by author Jane Cleland. The protagonist buys and sells antiques and does appraisals for other businesses or individuals who need her research skills, knowledge and network of experts. She lives and work in Rocky Point, New Hampshire, a small coastal town, and in this installment, has a gorgeous, thoughtful and loving partner, Ty.  They are good friends with a couple who run a new interior design business in town, Henri and Leigh Ann Dubois. When Henri is found murdered inside a storage unit for which he had the winning auction bid, Josie gets involved in trying to help find the killer. Nothing is found in the unit that seems worth much, but Henri had previously brought Josie some very old original movie posters for appraisal and Josie and her crew begin to realize that they may be worth a great deal. There are interesting lines of investigation for the appraisal process that also may move Josie closer to finding Henri's killer, but when the murder weapon turns up in Josie's car, and supposed love letters between Henri and Josie are discovered in an e-mail account, Josie realizes someone is clever and desperate enough to frame her. Now solving the mystery has become very personal. I loved reading about the appraisal process, have a fondness for antiques, and thoroughly enjoyed the setting and the characters. I will definitely find more of these to read.

Strangled in Paris

A "Victor Legris" mystery from Claude Izner, a pseudonym for two sisters who are used book dealers in Paris. Protagonist Victor Legris is also a book seller in late 1800's ("Belle Epoque") Paris, but would rather be solving mysteries, like that of a poor woman, wearing fine clothes and a mask, found strangled on the streets. This book and others by these authors have received very favorable reviews from some trusted sources (Kirkus,  The Historical Novel Society, and Publishers' Weekly who called it Izner's "best yet"), and has numerous elements I like--hints of the occult, murder mysteries, bookstores, historical novels. Nevertheless, after 100 pages, I was not engaged and am getting more hard-nosed about letting things go without finishing them.

The Bookshop on the Corner

This is a cozy mystery by Jenny Colgan (originally published in Britain under the title The Little Shop of Happy-Ever-After) set in Birmingham and the Highlands of Scotland. Anyone who has ever mourned the digitization of libraries to the exclusion of books will identify with Nina Redmond, librarian and literary matchmaker extraordinaire, who has recently had to re-apply for her job at the Birmingham public library--and failed. But she has taken a stash of the books that were destined for the recylcing and, when added to all those she has accumulated at her flat, feels she could start her own mobile library. Responding to an advertisement in the paper, she makes the long trek to the Highlands of Scotland to check out a big (really big) van for sale. Although the crotchety owner won't sell it to her, the friends she makes at the local pub (where she recommends books for them to read) decide to buy it from the recalcitrant owner and sell it to Nina. They also help her get it fixed up and running and she makes the enormous leap of faith to leave home and friends and everything she has known until now to move to Scotland. Former landlord/ flat-mate/ best friend, Surinder, takes a leave of absence to join Nina for a few weeks to help her get settled. Nina quickly realizes she loves the wide open spaces and the wonderful people (most of them) and cannot imagine moving back to the crowds and crime of Birmingham.

Nina has never been particularly good at matchmaking for herself and engages in yet another dead-end attachment, this time with a refugee train engineer, who leaves books and poems for her at the railroad crossing near her village. Eventually she learns he already has a son and long-time girlfriend back home, so Nina subsequenly--and predictably-- gets involved with her rude landlord. This is the least interesting part of the book, but Nina's explorations of Scotland, her growing involvement with her tiny village community, and her finding her own life and ways to express it are really enjoyable.

The Monster of Florence

Although this was a stylishly written novel by English author Magdalen Nabb, I will have to re-read it to figure out who actually committed the murders....or maybe I can just do the last few chapters. This series, with protagonist Marshal Guarnaccia of the Carabinieri, is based on an actual person and on actual events (although in real life they were not connected). There are a series of "couple" murders where lovers are slain and mutilated in their cars while parked in quiet country lanes around Florence (Italy). Supposedly a new suspect has come to light, or has more likely been manufactured by an ambitious and highly political superior officer, Simonetti. The settings, procedural details, and characters are well developed as different agendas are pursued by Simonetti, who wants a publicity grabbing conviction regardless of the suspect's guilt, and by Guarnaccia and a few of his more honorable colleagues who are trying to find the real killer. Not quite sure if I will pursue this author's other work or not.

The Nightingale

This highly acclaimed book by Kristin Hannah was personally recommended to me by friend Betsy Friedman. It is beautifully written and compelling story with well developed characters, and yet it was sometimes uncomfortable to read due to the subject matter. Set during WWII when the Nazis have occupied France, two sisters who are as unlike as can be imagined end up taking very similar paths, each to resist the obscenities of the war in her own way.
Viann and Isabelle's mother dies when they are quite young and their father retreats into alcohol and absence. Viann gets pregnant by a childhood sweetheart at 16 and moves to the country to live happily with husband and child. Younger sister, Isabelle, is an emotionally wounded isolate, getting kicked out of one boarding school after another. But she is also adventurous and when she returns to Paris, having decided to live with her father, she gets involved in the French Resistance, eventually coming to be a primary resource for getting downed American and British pilots out of the country. She leads them over the harrowing Pyrenees mountains on dozens of occasions, gaining notoriety as The Nightingale. Viann's husband is sent off to fight the invading Germans but is captured. The village where Viann lives with her daughter is occupied and a series of German officers is billeted at her house, one kind, one cruel. When her neighbor and best friend is sent to a concentration camp, Viann bravely declares the child is her own and hides his Jewish identity. Eventually she is responsible for hiding away 19 Jewish children in a convent in the nearby countryside. The arbitrary terror and cruelty of the Nazis is painfully described, but so is the incredible bravery and love of the two women. A very informative tale about the little known women who resisted war in France. About writing this book, Hannah said,
"For me, The Nightingale started like any other novel. With research. I came across the historical stories of the women of the French Resistance and there was no going back. Their stories were mesmerizing, heartbreaking, intimate and universal. I was appalled that their stories were not better known.
All of my research led me to a central question: When would I, as a wife and mother, risk my life and my son’s life to save a stranger? Once that was in my head, I knew I had a story worth telling." Agreed!

A Great Reckoning

I have had this latest Louise Penny "Inspector Gamache" mystery (the 12th in the series and I have devoured them all) for several weeks, but was just kind of hoarding it. Once I started reading it, though, I was in til the finish. Down and done in one day--I love being retired. As always, the characters are richly developed and it's a treat to watch the relationships evolve. For example, Jean Guy is now married to Gamache's daughter, Annie, and they are expecting their first child. Gamache has decided he has been retired long enough and decides to accept one of many job offers he has received. He will take over the running of the Surete Academy and find the source of the corruption that is turning out such cruel and abusive graduates. He has already brought down many in the Surete itself for corruption and this promises to be an equally great challenge. He fires some faculty and brings in his own, but also keeps a few bad apples in house where he can continue to build cases against them. Little does he realize just how bad things have become. A seemingly separate mystery is unleashed when the women in Three Pines decide to help Olivier go through some papers that were found stuffed in the bistro's walls when they remodeled. Among the newspapers, and letters is an orienteering map that seems to show the way to Three Pines. And yet, the village is not on any of the official maps of Quebec. How did a whole village get disappeared? When a copy of the map shows up in the bedside table of a faculty member who is murdered, cadets and Commander come under investigation. It is just amazing to me that Penny comes up with such deliciously twisty plots and convinces even her long-time fans that, just maybe, Gamache could be the murderer.
As I checked Louise Penny's web site for a picture to include here, I found out that her husband had recently died. Her letter about his last days is here.

A Murder of Magpies

Prior to now, social historian and journalist Judith Flanders has been a non-fiction writer, but here she jumps into a contemporary mystery set in the publishing world of London. Sam (short for Samantha) Clair is a 40-something-year old book editor for Timmons & Ross and feels content with her life, even though it's a bit on the routine side. She edits primarily "women's literature" except for one client who writes juicy tell-all pieces about the fashion world. When Kit misses a luncheon meeting to discuss promoting his newest book, Sam is worried; Kit never misses a meeting. When she gets a visit from Inspector Field from the CID about a hit and run killing of a messenger who was to deliver Kit's manuscript to her, she gets really worried and starts investigating on her own. Well, not quite. It is Field's investigation, after all, and her dynamo of a barrister mother, Helena, also decides to help out. Sam is clearly in someone's sights who wants to stop publication of the book that suggests there were a lot of shady financial dealings going on in a certain fashion house.  As time passes, Sam is more and more certain that Kit is dead, but she does not give up. Offering snarky one-liners, she uses her contacts and her smarts to figure out what the police haven't, and almost gets killed for her trouble. Very readable with interesting characters, and of course almost anything set in England draws me in. I will definitely keep an eye out for future work.

Crusader's Cross

This is the 14th (2005) in James Lee Burke's "Dave Robicheaux" series, set as most of them are in the bayou country of Louisiana. We are taken back to a summer when Dave and his half-brother Jimmie were working oil in Texas as young men and Jimmie falls in love with a woman who rescues them off the beach in Galveston. Unfortunately, the woman he falls for, Ida Durbin, is a hooker and before they can run away together, someone takes her forcefully and they never see her again. But a dying man's confession leads Dave to think that Ida might still be alive and when he tells Jimmie, nothing will stop him from trying to find her. Meanwhile, Dave is back on the police force as a detective and when he investigates a local wealthy family that he think might be tied to Ida's disappearance, he inevitably gets crossways with pretty ruthless people. He seduces a lay nun, and that causes a scandal, providing fodder for someone trying to destroy Robichaux's credibility.  Dave's guilt triggers a slip and he goes off the wagon and is barely pulled back from the brink of self-destruction by his new love and by his old friend, Clete Purcell. When a serial killer that has been operating in New Orleans apparently commits murder closer to home in Iberia Parish, Dave gets suspended from the police department after his fingerprints turn up at the  crimes scene and, because he was in an alcoholic blackout at the time, he's not even sure he didn't kill the woman.
These are dark and gritty tales about fallible good people and bad people who once in a while do good things. The descriptions of struggling with alcoholism ring painfully true and so are sometimes hard to take. Burke as always is a superb story teller with rich, flawed characters, and atmospheric settings.  
Review from Kirkus.

Hit or Myth

I was apparently intrigued enough by the description in the Daedalus catalog to order this book when our local library did not have it. Apparently, author Robert Asprin has been writing this humorous fantasy series since the 70's and this is the 4th installment in the "Myth Adventures" series. Skeeve is the "court magician" in the kingdom of Possiltum, whose mentor, Aahz, is a Pervect (not to be confused with pervert). But Aahz gets kidnapped back to his own dimension and so for the first part of the book, Skeeve is on his own when King Rodrick asks him to use his disguising spell and take over the throne for a day. Only it turns out that the king does a runner because he does not want to marry the highly ambitious princess from the neighboring kingdom. And to top it off, the Mob has sent representatives to Possiltum looking for their army that disappeared. But with some quick thinking, Skeeve is able to send the Mob off to another dimension to practice the art of extortion among the merchants at the Deva Bazaar. Friends help Skeeve find the king and put him back on the throne and Aahz rejoins the group in time to head off to Deva and deal with the Mob.
This is billed as a "humorous fantasy series" which draws heavily on word play and would be appropriate for young readers, maybe 9 to 12 years old. Not interesting enough to fully engage me or seek out more, although I did finish this book since I paid for it ;-) I will pass it along to a great niece or nephew.

The Murder of Mary Russell

I have fallen way behind in my reading of the "Mary Russell" series by Laurie King, so have missed some of the intervening books: the most recent one I read and wrote about was Garment of Shadows. Of the people I know who have read this book, one liked it, one did not, and another did not even finish it. I came down on the positive side, although I understand that it is a significant departure from the more typical straight-ahead mystery tales she usually writes in this series, and might leave Mary Russell fans a bit out of sorts.
Here we are re-introduced to Sherlock Holmes' ever reliable housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson. We learn of her decidedly unorthodox childhood and apprenticeship in Australia. She is orphaned at a young age and left with an ungrateful younger sister and a totally inadequate father, who does eventually teach his older daughter a useful skill--how to con people. As they become more successful, Australia gets a little too small and they head to England to pursue their art. Clarissa Hudson is expert at manipulating men, until she falls in love and is, in turn, manipulated by a man who is a bigger con than she, and who leaves her in the lurch with a baby. The baby is given to her sister in Australia to care for after Clarissa has made the acquaintance of Sherlock Holmes, who offers a path to rehabilitation. He gives her the premises at Baker Street and becomes her "tenant." This puts a VERY different light and perspective on the relationship between Holmes and Hudson. When Homes retired, Mrs. Hudson went with and has subsequently become a pseudo-mother figure to Mary Russell.
The drama surrounds Mrs. Hudson's history--the lover who jilted her, the father she murdered, and the son she gave away. Needless to say, Mary is not murdered, but it takes a while to find that out. The ending is a surprise, although totally logical, given what we have learned about Clara Hudson. Recommended for her wonderful story-telling and her courage to re-create such a formidable character as Mrs. Hudson.

Second Grave on the Left

Yes the title is significant. A valuable clue is hidden there in this 2nd installment in the "Charley Davidson" Series by Darynda Jones (see also my post on First Grave on the Right; you might want to wait to read the post on Dirt on the Ninth Grave as there are some real spoilers there for earlier installments). This is another wild ride with Grim Reaper, Charley Davidson, who in her regular life is a private detective. She has the ability of being able to see and talk to dead people who have not yet passed over, and to help them reach the other side.  Her father, a former detective, and her Uncle Bob, currently a detective with the Albuquerque PD, have, with her help,  solved an uncommonly high percentage of cases. People are a little suspicious and, in some cases, openly hostile at her ability to find killers.
When best friend and receptionist Cookie drags Charley out of bed in the middle of the night to help find a missing friend, Charley is awakened from a dreamy conversation with Reyes Farrow, the Son of Satan (yes, literally). Reyes has vacated his human body, which was in a coma in a prison hospital, and is being held prisoner by torturing demons. But he won't tell Charley where he is because she is the real target of his kidnapping--a portal to heaven for the evil creatures. Nevertheless he visits her in her dreams with lust in his heart. So Charley is trying to find Reyes on her own and trying to find Cookie's friend Mimi before a killer does. Fast-paced plot, sex, the supernatural, humor, and a kick-ass woman PI... these books have it all!

No Shred of Evidence

Author Charles Todd is actually a mother and son writing team and this is the latest (2016) installment in the "Inspector Ian Rutledge" series, which boasts over 2 dozen books. The time frame is just two years after the end of WWI in England, and protagonist Ian Rutledge is one of the many soldiers who has come home in worse shape than he left it. He was buried alive in a suicidal mission at the end of the war and carries the ghost and guilt of one of his former soldiers with him as a constant commentator and frequent tormentor.
In the north of Cornwall, 4 young women from moneyed families take advantage of a last sunny day and go out for a row on the Camel River only to see in the distance a young man from town, Harry the banker's son, apparently in dire straits on a sinking dinghy. They race to reach him before he drowns but are unable to haul him aboard. When they try to extend an oar to him, they lose control, hit him on the head, and are on the brink of capsizing. A farmer on shore swims out and helps pull the unconscious man aboard; however, when the group reaches shore, he swears to one and all that he saw the women trying to drown the man. The women are taken into custody but then released to the home of the local magistrate, Grenville, who is the father of one of the young women. Grenville also calls in a favor from the Home Office, and Scotland Yard sends an investigator, who dies of a heart attack two days into the inquiry. So now Rutledge is sent and it turns out he knows one of the accused. It is their word against that of the adamant farmer and, when Harry remains comatose and dies of his injuries, Rutledge is the only one who can save the women from the gallows--if he can find any evidence to support their version of events.
When a series of seemingly unrelated brutal beatings and murders occur in the same cluster of villages,  Rutledge is the only one who can seem to connect the dots. This was really a very clever plot, and I would definitely read other books in the series and also to check out the other series by this team, the "Bess Crawford" books.  

Treachery in Death

Always good for an engaging read or listen, this is another installment in pseudonymous J. D. Robb's (Nora Roberts) "In Death" series, of which there are over 40, almost all of them making the NYT bestseller list. I have one previous blog post for Thankless in Death, but have listened to numerous others while on car trips. The characters are well developed (no surprise after 40 novels) and interesting, the plots engaging, and the slightly futuristic settings well drawn.
 In the latter 21st century, protagonist Eve Dallas is a lieutenant and head of Homicide for New York Police and Security Department (NYPSD). Her stalwart partner, Peabody, has now made detective grade and so Eve often gives her more of a lead role in investigations. Nevertheless, Eve will never be a desk jockey and is very involved when cases come along. This episode is kicked off when Peabody overhears a conversation between dirty cops in the locker room of a seldom-used departmental gym. They have clearly ordered a hit on one of their minions and Peabody is genuinely in fear for her life if the dirty cops discover her cowering naked in a shower stall. She reports what she has learned to Eve and it turns out that the leader of this corruption is the daughter of a decorated and revered former chief of the NYPSD. The corruption has spread beyond one department, Eve is not sure who to trust, and so the investigation must be run somewhat off the books. Eve deliberately sets herself up as a target by finding the murdered snitch, and refusing to treat it as the overdose it was staged to appear, thereby getting into Lt. Oberman's face and that of her mostly corrupt detectives, who are supposed to investigate the illegal use of drugs (what would be called "Narcotics" today is called "Illegals" in the book). Oberman is paranoid, clever and thorough, but Eve is just as cunning and, with the help of trusted colleagues, she uncovers both the trail of money and of bodies. A fast and enjoyable read.

The Last Bookaneer

I tried once again to read Matthew Pearl (see previous blog on The Technologists), especially since this was such a great title.  Set in 1890's London, bookaneers track down as-yet-unpublished manuscripts and sell them to the highest bidder. However, increasingly  restrictive copyright laws may be bringing this somewhat shady profession to an end. The infamous Pen Davenport, accompanied by reluctant assistant Fergins, sets out for one final heist, sailing off to Samoa where Robert Louis Stevenson is reportedly working on his final book. I love the premise but just felt bogged down in the writing with no characters that really grabbed my interest. Abort.

House of the Rising Sun

This is the 4th in James Lee Burke's Holland family series that feature Hackberry Holland. We meet up with Hack when he has been desperately trying to find his estranged son, Ishmael, in the middle of the Mexican Revolution in 1916. He has done things he would rather not think about and is now lost in the desert, bootless, weaponless, and on the run using a horse stolen from Pancho Villa's army, when he stumbles upon a bordello with a hearse sitting out front. He is captured by the Mexican soldiers who have taken the house and killed several of Ishmael's cavalry company of black soldiers.  Hack escapes and blows up the weapons that were hidden in the hearse after rescuing a gold-embellished onyx goblet, rumored to be the Grail. The madame, Beatrice DeMolay, has a profound impact on him and will enter the picture again as the story goes on.  He does not find Ishmael, but keeps searching and writing him letters.
Two years later, in 1918, we join Ishmael at the Battle of the Marne and get vivid descriptions of the insanity that is war. He is grievously wounded and sent back to the U.S. In the meantime, we get some background on Hack's meeting of Ishmael's mother, Ruby Dansen, their separation and Hack's thwarted attempts to reconcile with her and reunite the family. His efforts fail largely as the result of his on-again, off-again wife's (Maggie Bassett) destruction of vital communications between Ruby and Hack. Ruby and Ishmael are left thinking that Hack promised to come get them and then never showed.  Ishmael thinks his father, "Big Bud," abandoned them.
Beatrice, Ruby and Maggie will wind in and out of Hack's life as he tries to find his way forward to seeing his son again. Another major player in this drama is the Austrian arms dealer, Arnold Beckman. Both the hearse full of destroyed weapons and the cup were Beckman's, and he is determined to get it back at any cost. Beckman aligns himself with Maggie and kidnaps Ishmael from a military hospital to hold hostage in order to get the Grail back. Beckman is the embodiment of amoral evil, but Hack also has a demonic destructive force inside him that either drives him to drink self-destructively or lay waste to those he believes do wrong.
Although, the ending is satisfying, the level of darkness in the book was often times nearly overwhelming, leaving me wondering if any good could come out of the guilt and self-loathing that Hack evidences. Burke is of course an outstanding writer--his prose is second to none. But this is not an upper of a read, even at the very end. 

Sweet Tea Revenge

Not hard to guess from the title that this is from Laura Childs' "Tea Shop Mystery" series (#14 to be precise). These are engaging reads for several reasons: they are well written with interesting characters; I love the setting descriptions of Charleston, SC; plots and story trajectory are somewhat predictable but nevertheless sufficiently challenging; they are full of luscious descriptions of teas and food; the recipes for the teas and food follow the text plus a lot of other interesting tea resources.
Delaine Dish, owner of the Cotton Duck boutique and friend of Theo"s, is finally getting married--to a very wealthy man-- and Theodosia is to be the maid of honor. But then the groom turns up dead and Delaine pleads with Theo to find out who killed her future husband.  It could be the long-estranged step-son who has suddenly re-insinuated himself into his step-father's life and law practice, or perhaps the vicious ex-girlfriend, or maybe even Dougan's law partner. In her inimitable fashion, Theo manages to investigate all the leads, help the police, and still keep the Indigo tea shop perking along with help from baker extraordinaire, Haley and tea-master, Drayton.

Fire Touched

One of my favorite guilty pleasures is reading the "Mercy Thompson" series from Patricia Briggs, and this is the 9th and most recent (2016) installment. I have blogged about the previous eight if you want to know who characters are.
The Columbia Basin pack is called out to help when a monstrous troll begins taking apart one of the bridges across the Columbia River near the Tri-Cities and smashing up cars and their passengers. Newest pack member, Joel, a fiery Tibicena, joins the werewolves in finally containing the monster. This seems certain to be a challenge from the exiled Fae, and Mercy brazenly responds , making the pack a highly visible--and vulnerable-- target. This focuses  previous mutterings of dissatisfaction within the pack against Mercy and brings Adam's leadership into question. When Zee and Tad mysteriously reappear a day later after several weeks' unexplained absence, with an apparently young boy in tow, the tension really ramps up, for the boy, Aiden, who has been kept as a prisoner/ playmate in a fae nether world for decades, has come to the pack seeking sanctuary from the Grey Lords of the Fae. As always, there is non-stop action, cohesive and well-developed characters, and a well-thought-out alternative world presented here. There is also a bit of humor in a pissing match between the juvenile appearing asylum seeker and Adam's daughter, Jesse.

The Billion Dollar Spy

Former Pulitzer Prize winner, David E. Hoffman, here undertakes to reveal the challenges and inner workings of the CIA in the Russian theatre during the Cold War. One of the their major successes, after numerous failed attempts to recruit and run spies, was Adolf Tolkachev, a Russian engineer, who, over more than a decade, brought out thousands of pages of research and development work being done by the Russians, saving the U. S. literally billions of dollars. Knowing from the outset that Tolkachev was eventually betrayed by a disgruntled CIA trainee does nothing to diminish the suspense of this historical narrative based on de-classified CIA materials. We are offered insights not only into the mind of Tolkachev, but also of several key players in Moscow station (CIA facilities housed in the U.S. Embassy) and in Washington, DC. The CIA operatives' worst enemy was ostensibly the ever-vigilant KGB, but sometimes was their own leadership. Fascinating reading for those interested in this era. Even though I missed the meeting because I was in Maine, I read this because it was the most recent selection of my other book group.There is a lengthy and favorable review of this book in the NYTimes.

Tea Shop Mysteries

When I am in the mood for light reading, I often look for another book in Laura Child's Tea Shop Mysteries, which are set in Charleston, SC. Not only do I enjoy the mysteries themselves, but I love the descriptions of the architecture in Charleston, the atmospheric descriptions of the South, the characters, the elaborate descriptions of teas, and the recipes that are included at the end. For my recent trip to Maine, I downloaded Devonshire Scream and Shades of Earl Grey.
In Devonshire Scream (17th in the series, which includes, of course, a recipe for Devonshire cream), a trunk show of high-end estate jewelry is brutally interrupted when a large truck smashes through the front of the store, Heart's Desire, and several masked individuals jump out and smash the glass cases, taking everything in sight. In the process, the niece of the store owner is impaled by a piece of glass and dies. Theodosia agrees to help shop owner and good friend Brooke Crockett find the people who destroyed her business and killed her niece. The FBI is brought in because the thieves are suspected of several  robberies in other states, and Detective Tidwell is on the case locally. But Theodosia has resources none of them have with her inquisitive mind, deep knowledge of Charleston and its people, and her intrepid tea master and fellow sleuth, Drayton. Theodosia's plan to lay a trap at the upcoming Heritage Society event, which will feature a real Faberge egg, almost backfires when tea shop chef Haley is kidnapped, but all comes right in the end.

Theodosia's adopted rescue dog is named Earl Grey, and he is her companion and running partner. Theo and Earl Grey jog around Charleston at night, where she is sure to find possible suspects for the crimes in which she becomes embroiled. This time around, in the 3rd installment of the Tea Shop Mysteries, Shades of Earl Grey, what initially appears to be an accidental death of the groom at an engagement party for Theo's friend Delaine's niece, quickly becomes something more sinister--at least in Theodosia's mind--when the pricey family heirloom engagement ring goes missing. Then a sapphire necklace is stolen from the Heritage Society and Theodosia is hot on the trail of the thief/ murderer.

The Technologists

Fourth historical novel by Matthew Pearl  (all his previous books have been NYT bestsellers) is set in 1868 Boston, the year that the first group of students will graduate from fledgling institute that will become MIT. Many people want to see MIT fail, not least of all the students and faculty of Harvard who view them as upstart imposters, and the trade unionists who fear that the science and technology studied there will cost workers their jobs. Marcus Mansfield, a poor working class student admitted on scholarship, two of his fellow classmates from significantly wealthier family backgrounds, and the sole woman student--who must be educated separate from the men--Ellen Swallow (an actual historic personage), team up when a series of mysterious catastrophes beset Boston shipping and commerce, and appear to be the work of those who will misuse science to their own evil ends. Working in secret, against the specific resolution of the MIT faculty, but with the secret encouragement of MIT's president, it is a race against time before the next disaster strikes. Several reviews from the major library media are here, an old interview with him from The Guardian is here, and a review from the NY Sunday Times is here (not very favorable).

Ready Player One

If you are a fan of video games or the 80's culture in ANY form, this book will have great appeal. Written by Ernest Cline, this inaugural effort is set in a not-too-distant dystopic future, starting in the outskirts of Oklahoma City--of all places; that's where I grew up. Massive numbers of people are poor, jobless, prospect-less, and living in "stacks" which are these huge metal grid structures with every manner of RV and trailer slotted into often 20+ story high-rises. Many people escape the ugly reality by spending time in The Oasis, an elaborate online virtual world freely available to anyone with internet access. Seventeen-year old Wade Watts also attends school there, and when he is not in "school" he is playing games, hanging out in best friend Aech's chat room, or monitoring the blog of his fantasy girl, Artemis. But the creator of the Oasis has died and left his fortune to whoever can solve a series of puzzles which involve finding keys and then opening gates. Knowledge and skill are required and Wade is one among millions who intend to get to the prize first. A mega-corporation that wants to commercialize The Oasis has also hired hundreds of people to try and solve the puzzle and they have enormous advantages, both technology and money wise. Years have passed without anyone finding the first key, and then Wade does. The lengths to which the corporation will go to win include murdering the leading competitors, and as Wade (aka Parzival), Aech and Artemis learn, they may have to abandon their lone wolf approaches to survive. Read this book for my SF-Fantasy book group and thoroughly enjoyed it. The good guys (and gals) win in the end. There are more detailed plot descriptions in  reviews from the New York Times and Booklist and Powell's.

City of Thieves

This novel by David Benioff (co-creator of HBO's Game of Thrones series) commences with a conversation between author and grandfather as Benioff beseeches his grandfather for recollections of living through the Nazi siege of Leningrad. There seems to be some debate about whether his grandfather was actually there (see review from NYT). Following that prologue, however, we jump into the life of 17 year-old Lev Beniov, who is yet too young to join the army but helps man a fire brigade from the roof of his old apartment building. One night, he and his pals see a parachute coming down and when it lands in the street, they find a dead German pilot, whose corpse they promptly strip for weapons and clothes. Keep in mind that, at this point, they are lucky to get one piece of paper-filled bread or an eighth of an onion to eat on any given day. But when the cops show up, Lev nobly helps a fallen friend, a girl he secretly longs for, to escape and is caught in the process. Awaiting execution overnight, he is joined in his cell by his exact opposite. Whereas Lev is dark and slight and inexperienced with women, Kolya is a descendant of Cossacks with blonde-haired, blue-eyed good looks and charm that women of all ages find irresistible. Kolya swears he did not desert his unit but just missed his ride; nevertheless, they will both be hanged or shot. But fate intervenes and they are taken before a secret police general who wants them to find a dozen eggs for his daughter's upcoming wedding cake. If they succeed--against all odds--they get their lives back. They start by following every rumor and searching all the black market sources in the city and nearly get killed by cannibals. Eventually they go behind enemy lines into the countryside seeking chickens. What they find instead are girls held hostage for pleasuring Nazi officers and a band of partisan fighters. They are captured, but then Kolya hatches a plan to get the eggs from their captors by wagering Lev's chess playing skills against those of the 

Sturmbannführer. Benioff provides well-researched and compelling descriptions of the hardships and violence faced by the Russian common folk during the siege. An additional review from Kirkus.

One True Sentence

Not surprising, given the title, the book is about writers--famous ones for the most part--but a very fictionalized account upon which to build a mystery. The setting is 1920's Paris, when aspiring writers and artists of all sorts flooded to the post-war City of Light to live cheaply and find inspiration. Hector Lassiter, best friend of Ernest Hemmingway and writer of pulp short stories that are readily published and consumed in American magazines. Ernest is there with wife Hadley and new baby, Gertrude Stein, Alice Toklas, Sylvia Beach and more all play character roles as the plot evolves around a series of murders. The victims are all editors of small, struggling literary magazines of which there are several. Hector is being pursued by Molly, a young poet from Elgin, Illinoise, even though she has a boyfriend, struggling painter, Philippe. Besides, she seems a little too wholesome and innocent for Hector's tastes. Enter Brinke Devlin, a sexy black-haired beauty with a reputation for being the "professional muse" around town; Sylvia reveals to Hector that she is secretly a mystery writer who works under a man's pseudonym. Add in a 3rd English cozy writer and Gertrude decides they must undertake to find the killer or killers, since she has no faith in the police. As part of the storyline, we learn about a group of people who have embraced nothing as their icon--not dada-ists, but nada-ists, and it quickly becomes apparent that they are involved in the murders. But all is not as it seems. Although Hector and Devlin fall in lust and then love, he begins to wonder about her role; is she really helping him investigate or leading him a merry chase in the wrong direction. This is not one you will figure out ahead of time as it provides lots of twists and turns.There is a lot of explicit sex, cold December weather, and literary allusions. Good but not stellar, although they may get better as this is the first in a series of 10 books featuring Hector Lassiter, and Craig McDonnald's Head Games, was nominated for the Edgar and the Anthony awards. Kirkus review here.

Killer Reunion

This 21st installment in the "Savannah Reid" mystery series by G.A. McKevett (a pseudonym of author Sonja Massie) finds Savannah and relatively new husband Det. Lt. Dirk Coulter on a visit to Savannah's home town of McGill, Georgia, for a 25th high school reunion. Savannah grew up dirt poor, the oldest of 9 siblings, taken from her abusive parents at a young age and raised by loving grandparents. There were a lot of cruel kids at school who made fun of her poverty, but Jeannette Parker was the mean queen of them all. Savannah is hoping for a triumphant return on the arm of her handsome and loving husband, as well as getting to celebrate Granny Reid's 80th birthday. Her ex-beau, one of Jeannette's many conquests, is now the county sheriff, as hunky and good-looking as ever and maybe still in love with Savannah. When Savannah gets into a cat fight with Jeannette at the reunion and then Jeannette turns up dead, guess who becomes the prime suspect and gets thrown in jail--into the same cell as her drunk and disorderly mother.?! But family and friends mortgage it all to get Savannah out on bail so she can figure out who the real killer is. She is well equipped to do this as she runs the Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency back in Santa Carmelita, California, and her trusty sidekick Tammy, and Savannah's youngest brother fly in to help her. Well portrayed characters, complete with southern drawls, evocative sense of place, and realistic dynamics of a small town are all in favor of this book. Light fare reading and there is lots of it if you want to start at the beginning. Savannah, BTW is a big woman, making her a somewhat unusual protagonist, which is also refreshing. Brief review from Kirkus.

The Insides

This is Jeremy Bushnell's 2nd novel; I blogged about the first, The Weirdness, a few weeks back. I liked the first book but I like this one even more. The characters are fully realized and some are truly likeable, whereas others are empathy-worthy or detestable. In other words, they engage you. As Bushnell says on his web page, this is "about knives, meat, weird portals, witches, monsters, and racists."
Ollie is a highly accomplished butcher, in the most ordinary sense of the word, working for a high-end NYC restaurant called Carnage that stakes claim to unusual preparations of a wide variety of meats. All day long, she wields her knives taking apart carcasses in elegant fashion and finds the work satisfying. She is in an informal competition with Guychardson, who helps out on weekends, and while she is clearly the more accomplished butcher, he always seems to finish before she does. She thinks it might be because his knife is magical.  She would know because she used to be a street magician before she married, moved to an organic farm and had a kid. But that is all in the past and she has distanced herself from magic. However, a racist thug who delights in wearing a wooden pig mask, desperately wants Guychardson's knife--which may not be a knife at all but a piece of a legendary World Sword--and is happy to kill people to get it. Pig's partner in seeking the knife has engaged the services of a psychic, Maja, who can find anything. So now, wherever the knife goes, Maja and Pig are not far behind. This is an intriguing plot line, lots of fanciful magic elements and an alternate world thrown in for good measure. Absolutely enjoyable read. A review from Publishers Weekly and from The Washington Post.

The Strangler Vine

Set in 1830's India, this book by M. J. Carter is a mystery that evokes the hot and harsh environs very effectively and offers a biting view of the deteriorating relations between the policies and practices of the East India Company and the native population at all social levels. The strangler vine, which wraps itself around trees and eventually kills them, is a less-than-subtle metaphor for the colonialism of the Raj.
A minor officer in the EIC army, Avery, is set to accompany, Blake, an apparently dissolute former captain who has gone native to locate a famous and now missing British author, Mounstuart, in the back country. Apparently Blake was something of a "black ops" specialist for the EIC until his native wife died and then he simply withdrew from society. Blake and Avery are accompanied by 3 additional native employees of the company as they begin to trace Mountstuart's route and Avery begins to get a sense of Blake's wide range of skills, not least of which are his fluency in the local languages and an uncanny ability to disguise himself as a native in order to blend in and gather intelligence. The cult of Thugee--real or manufactured--plays a prominent role in this elaborate plot which involves betrayals from unexpected sources. An excellent and engaging read and I will track down the sequel featuring Blake and Avery, The Infidel Stain. Favorable reviews from Kirkus, The Washington Post, and The Independent.

His Majesty's Dragon

Would that be HMD as opposed to HMS? Capt. Will Laurence of HMS Reliant has been in the navy since he was 12 and steadily moved up the ranks due to his competence and leadership. Having recently defeated a French frigate, he is shocked to find that their cargo includes a dragon egg--a rare enough commodity--that is due to hatch before they reach land. The captain asks for volunteers because the dragon will imprint when it hatches and then is bonded to that person as his aviator for the rest of his life. Unfortunately, the dragon bonds to Capt. Laurence himself, thus potentially ending his career in the navy and his prospects for marriage. The air corps is a slightly undisciplined and isolated group within the military structure. But once Laurence goes flying with Temeraire, he is hooked. When the Reliant reaches land, the appropriate officials are contacted and efforts are made to remove Laurence from the equation to be replaced with a trained aviator. But Tereraire will have nothing of it and so the air corps must take Laurence on with his magnificent young dragon in the middle of the Napoleonic wars. Temeraire, it turns out, is a rare Chinese breed of dragon and nobody really knows what special skills he will have. He was born fluent in French and English, having picked those languages up in the egg, and proceeds to have Will read to him every night about subjects even Will does not understand but that Temeraire grasps with ease. Of course Temeraire talks to Will and is by far the most interesting character. There is a rather cloying use of terms of endearment between the two, and a lot of French types of dragons thrown in during battle scenes. There is a nice little glossary of the various dragon family lines appended to the text. This is an alternative history of those wars, with very detailed descriptions of strategies, and the first of an intended trilogy by Naomi Novik (although the series has gone way beyond that). I did not like this book as well as the one I previously read, Hugo-nominted Uprooted. However, if you are a dragon fan, you will love this book.

The Weirdness

Not sure how I got onto this book by Jeremy P. Bushnell, but it certainly lived up to its name. Billy Ridgeway is a bit of a space cadet, holding down a job making sandwiches while maintaining that his real vocation is as a writer. Unfortunately, nothing he has written has ever gotten wider approval, or even Billy's own. Fellow writer Anil, who also works at the sandwich shop has been Billy friend for a long time and puts up with his philosophical maunderings about things like where bananas come from. Waking one morning with a bad hangover, Billy finds a well-dressed man in his living room who claims to be Lucifer Morningstar, and he offers to make Billy a famous novelist if Billy will just retrieve his lucky Neko cat from a dangerous warlock. Billy IS smart enough to resist--at first. But Billy's life nevertheless begins to unwind in serious and dangerous fashion and it turns out that the devil may be the least of his problems. I was not sure I was going to finish this, but eventually I did get hooked. Billy is not exactly a character it's easy to empathize with or even feel sorry for--he just seems so aimless. But the cast of characters and the plots developments are unpredictable and entertaining, so I would give it a thumbs up.

Uprooted

This fantasy novel by Naomi Novik (one I read for my SF/Fantasy book group) was really meaty and satisfying...enough so that I have dived into the beginning book of her "Temeraire" dragon series. This is apparently a departure from her previous war-focused novels and reads more like a fairy tale. Once upon a time, there was a beautiful valley in some place like Poland, with a river connecting the small villages, mountains in the backgrounds and a terrible and malevolent Wood that wants to devour everything. The villages are protected largely by one of the King's wizards who lives in a tower across the river. Every 10 years, he comes to the collective celebration of the villages to choose one young woman to serve him for the next 10 years. Everyone knows that loyal, beautiful and smart Kasia will be the one chosen, but she is Agnieszka's best friend and Agnieszka is terrified of losing her. Surprisingly, the wizard Sarkan, known to the villagers as The Dragon, takes Agnieszka instead. Eventually she realizes that she has magical powers of her own, which The Dragon works desperately to enhance and refine, because it seems clear that the Wood is getting ready. When Kasia is taken by the Wood, Agnieszka  finds a way to rescue her and this gets back to the Prince, who is the next in line to the throne. The Prince forces Agnieszka, Kasia and the Dragon to join him on a suicidal mission to rescue his mother who was taken  by the Wood 20 years ago. Just when you think the story is resolving, another whole thread of the plot is taken up and woven in. Wonderful strong female protagonist that should appeal to older teens and adults alike. The book has been optioned by Warner Brothers for a film.

The Asset

In this novel by Shane Kuhn, our protagonist is a man who lives an existence driven by guilt  because he ignored his sister's request to fly home with her and the plane was one of those that crashed into the twin towers on 9/11. Since then, Kennedy has studied behavioral indicators of terrorists, notably with the Israelis, and has become the "go-to" trainer for TSA agents in the United States and abroad. He practically lives on airplanes, and when he is "home" in LA, he lives in a hotel. He is approached by the CIA to help determine what sort of master plan is going to be implemented by a nearly invisible terrorist who manipulates world events from behind the scenes to keep himself funded. Kennedy initially agrees to help, then quits when two sleeper terrorists working as TSA agents are killed. When he decides he wants back in, he has to prove his value by tracking down the terrorist on his own, with a little help from his sister's former best friend, pop star Love.
This is a very twisty plot and you trust all the wrong people along the way, but it draws you in and along until the very end when the resolution is just so unbelievable. Kennedy single-handedly disarms a nuclear weapon set to go off in Atlanta airport and ultimately becomes a member of the CIA, along with his new love, Love.

Night Shift

I am a Charlaine Harris junky, having read 2 previous series (Sookie Stackhouse and Lily Bard) in their entirety, several of the Aurora Teagarden and Harper Connelly series, and everything previously published in this newest series about Midnight, Texas. Midnight's residents are disturbed by people coming to kill themselves at the exact center of the crossroads that is the apparent reason for the town's existence. A large and scary voice is beginning to talk to Fiji, claiming it wants to make her happy by killing those who have been mean to her. Lemuel is still desperately trying to translate the books found hidden in the pawn shop that he believes will reveal what is driving this spate of suicides. Fiji, meanwhile, has broken up with Bobo--at least in her mind, although her heart and body don't seem to want to fall in line. When it turns out that a demon banished 250 years ago is about to re-emerge at the crossroads, and that only the blood of a witch can stop him from taking power and destroying the world, Fiji comes under a bit of pressure to perform a public deflowering on the site. Lots of other developments among the unusual populace keep this story rich and entertaining. There is a map of Midnight on the front and back end papers which is always a treat. Highly recommended if you like the supernatural. You don't have to have read the previous two installments (Day Shift and Midnight Crossroad) but why wouldn't you?!

Boar Island

The newest in the "Anna Pigeon" series by Nevada Barr is set on an island off the coast of Maine adjacent to Acadia National Park. Since Hal and I will be headed there in a couple of weeks, I was especially interested, although Nevada Barr has always been a favorite (see previous blog on Destroyer Angel). Anna's goddaughter Elizabeth is being cyberstalked and bullied after she is grabbed and fondled by her best friend's husband. At first Elizabeth thinks her friend has started the smear campaign, but when Anna and Heath (Elizabeth's adoptive mother) confront the family they deny everything. Anna is suddenly assigned to be acting Chief Ranger at Acadia while their regular Chief is off fighting fires. Heath's pediatric surgeon aunt, Gwen, comes up with the brilliant idea to go visit friends who own Boar Island and get Elizabeth et al. away from bad situation in Boulder.
In a thread that will soon tie in, we learn about Ranger Denise Castle, who is still seething about being dumped after 11 years together with Superintendent Peter Barnes. Now Peter is married and has a daughter, after forcing Denise to have an abortion. Denise discovers she has a twin; they were separated and put up for adoption at birth. Denise lived a horror story of foster homes until finding her place in the National Park Service. Sister Paulette has been living with an abusive husband since she was 16, who beat her during both pregnancies, causing miscarriages. Denise begins to formulate a grand plan for them to get away and be together, starting with killing Paulette's husband.
Meanwhile, the stalker appears to have followed Elizabeth to Maine and is now demanding an in-person meeting in order to stop the harassment. Anna is pulled to investigate both the murder of Paulette's husband, even though it is technically outside her jurisdiction, and so becomes a target for Denise.  It is a fast-paced, tense story line, but not a lot of description of the park, which was a disappointment. Still, you can't go wrong with this series. 

Death on the Sapphire

This is the first of an intended series featuring Edwardian-era Lady Frances Ffolkes by R. S. Koreto. She is an unusual woman in so many respects. She persuaded her parents--over vigorous objections--to let her travel to America for a college education. Her mother's winning argument was that is Frances did outlandish things, fewer of their friends would hear about it! Of course she has come back to London, bolstered in her beliefs about the independence of women and is an active and ardent supporter of the Suffragist movement as well as many other charities. She works one night a week at the soup kitchen and so has up-close knowledge of the disparities between the classes. When the sister of her older brother's best friend call Frances for help in finding her dead brother's final memoir manuscript, Frances stirs up a lot of fear and violence. Because it turns out that the manuscript of this former British officer in the Boer wars plans to reveal how his men were sent into a suicide mission by traditionalists back home who could not accommodate to the new style of guerrilla warfare being waged there. Powerful people do NOT want this information to come out and those who have knowledge of the events are quickly disappearing. Frances contacts Scotland Yard, who in turn put her in touch with the new secret service and this sets alarm bells ringing for her and trusty lady's maid, June Mallow. Frances begins to think that Major Colcombe's death was murder and not an accident. Loyalty in all sorts of forms drives the actors in this story and the characters are very well developed. Setting is also well described and evocative. Definitely a superior read to the earlier book I reviewed with basically the same settings and similar pair of protagonists (lady and her maid, see Death Sits Down to Dinner). Review here from Publishers Weekly