Big Magic

This newest book by Elizabeth Gilbert was long anticipated by me as I was on the waiting list at the library for several weeks. We went to hear her speak through the library's "Author! Author!" series a couple of months ago. She was such an engaging speaker, and talked a lot about the book, so much of it was very familiar. Still I am really glad I read the book. She takes the opposite position of many "self-help" people who encourage readers to "follow their passion." Gilbert says, you can give those people the finger. If you have a clear passion, you are probably already following it; she recommends instead that you follow your curiosity. She does such a splendid job of summing up the book in the final chapter, that I just need to quote her:
"Creativity is sacred, and it is not sacred. What we make matters enormously, and it doesn't matter at all. We toil alone, and we are accompanied by spirits. We are terrified, and we are brave. Art is a crushing chore and a wonderful privilege. Only when we are at our most playful can divinity finally get serious about us. Make space for all these paradoxes to be equally true inside your soul, and I promise--you can make anything."
This also epitomizes her approach which is, on the one hand, advocating spirit and magic, and, on the other, brutally pragmatic. If you ever wanted to make things, do not burden that desire with the weight of expectations for greatness, significance, acknowledgement, or financial gain. Just do it because that is part of our nature as human beings and it makes us feel good. Lovely book.

Mucho Mojo

Hap and Leonard are back in this second installment of the series by Joe Lansdale (see also my post for the first book in the series, Savage Season). The characters are starting to grow on me. The first book ended with both men injured and Leonard seriously so; he is still getting around with a cane. He has just learned that an uncle who helped raise him has died. That uncle also disavowed Leonard when Leonard declared that he was gay, so they have not spoken in years. Nevertheless, Leonard asks Hap to drive him to the funeral and there they meet uncle Chester's attorney, the attractive young black attorney, Florida Grange. Turns out uncle Chester was getting a bit disoriented in his later years, but he left Leonard his house, a sizable chunk of money and a key to a safe deposit box. The house is in serious need of repairs and is now next door to a drug dealers' lair in the poor part of LaBorde, Texas. They move into the house to fix it up so Leonard can sell it and they begin to uncover some really disturbing things...like a child's skeleton and child pornography magazines buried in a trunk under the floor.
Leonard is convinced that, no matter what else was wrong with Chester, he would never harm or kill a child and he enlists Hap's help to prove Chester's innocence. Hap and Florida get involved, Hap and Leonard help the ancient lady across the street fix her porch, and eventually they also burn down the drug house after the death of child hooked on heroine. Great local color, frank discussions about prejudice and racial bias on both sides, and a taut plot line all make this a worthwhile read. More details about the characters here.

Killer's Art

Mari Jungstedt apparently has quite a reputation as a Scandinavian noir writer. Of course there is a policeman as a main character, Anders Knutas, but a journalist for Swedish TV, Johan Berg, also plays a major role in solving the mystery. Set primarily on the island of Gotland, in the medieval town of Visby, this centers around art, homosexuality, and revenge. Like seemingly all Scandinavian literature, the weather is also a major player, for it is the dead of winter when, following a successful artist launch, highly respected Visby art gallery owner, Egon Wallin, is found murdered and hung from the tallest gate in the ancient city wall. Seemingly all efforts to find the killer hit dead ends, even though investigations uncover stolen art works hidden in Wallin's house and paperwork is found revealing that Wallin had secretly sold his gallery to a company fronting for his major competitor in Stockholm.  Then, a stolen scupture from Wallin's gallery is left behind at the site of a major art theft in Stockholm, that seems to tie the two events together. Still the authorities are stymied. Meanwhile, Johan, having finally convinced his woman friend, Emma, who is also  the mother of his child, to marry him,  pursues his own theories to find the killer. And apparently he gets too close because his infant daughter is kidnapped.
This is a tense, atmospheric and tightly drawn plot. The only thing I found a bit distracting were some long-ish thought processes on the part of Johan about how much in love with Emma he is and how ready he is to change his life. It's good to know what a character is thinking, and, of course, the upward trajectory of his relationship makes the ending all the more shocking, but it could have been done with less space. Emma is revealed, for example, in a much more succinct manner. It is clear that much has come before and that there is lots more going on in several of the relationships than is available in this one book (this is the 4th in the series featuring Detective Superintendent Knutas). Certainly recommended for fans of Scandinavian crime fiction. Reviews: The Independent, and Publishers Weekly.

Killer Librarian

OK... how could I possibly resist a book with this title. Mary Logue, writing as Mary Lou Kirwin, author of both fiction and non-fiction works, has started a new series featuring Minnesota librarian, Karen Nash. Karen is all packed and ready to go on her dream trip of a lifetime--a trip to London with her long-time boyfriend Dave, a plumber. When Dave calls just hours before they are to leave for the airport and tells her they are through, does this intrepid woman have a meltdown? No, she books a ticket for herself and goes anyway. On the plane she discovers that Dave is also still making the trip, but with a much younger and very slender blonde. Since Karen fortuitously gets bumped to first class, they never see her on the plane, but she follows them once they all arrive in London.
On her first night, her B & B owner, Caldwell, takes her to the local Indian restaurant for a curry and follows that up with a visit to his favorite pub. Becoming a bit tipsy due to the rather strong British brew that Caldwell and his friends keep putting in front of her, she confides in the man standing next to her at the bar about the wretched way Dave has treated her and her fantasies of killing him.
Next morning, Karen discovers one of the B & B's elderly guests dead in a sitting room chair. She's not so sure it was just an accidental heart attack and everyone, including Caldwell, the dead man's younger wife, and the dotty sisters who come every year for the Chelsea flower show are suspects in Karen's mind.
Meanwhile, Karen is loving London, but also hearing that the confidante of her drunken ramblings may have connections to the criminal elements, and she is alarmed when she sees him talking to Dave's new girlfriend outside the National Gallery. What has she set in motion? This is an engaging character, a fond portrait of London, and an entertaining cosy for book lovers. I will definitely keep my eye out for the next book, Death Overdue.

The Last Templar

OK, so here is how I got started on "The Templar Series" by Michael Jecks. I get this book catalog from Daedalus and instead of constantly buying new books, if something sounds interesting, I try and find it in the public library. But, of course, if it is part of a series, I want to start with the first one...so this is the first of these historical mysteries set in the early 14th C (mostly) Devon, England, featuring a former Templar Knight, Sir Baldwin Furnshill, and Simon Puttock, the newly appointed bailiff for the de Courtenay family. The time period is a tumultuous one and tiny villages and small towns, the magnificent woods, and the rolling hills form the backdrop for lots of bad behavior--in this case, murder.
In this book, we get most of the background of Baldwin, which is key to one of the murders--not hard to guess which one. He has come back to England after over 20 years abroad fighting as a Templar Knight, in service to Pope Clement. The Templars were betrayed by the avaricious Pope, however, working in league with France's king, both of them seeking to gain the money and properties of the Church's defenders. Baldwin escapes the wholesale purge and vows to find out who is responsible for defaming the Templars and bringing about their downfall through lies, contrived evidence and falsified confessions. But once he identifies the culprit, he realizes that the man is beyond his reach, until--perhaps through the will of God--the former Templar and now newly appointed abbot comes to England.
Simon has just taken up his post as bailiff when a farmer is murdered in a tiny village on Furnshill's land, and it is Baldwin who figures out that it was murder and not an accident. Then the abbot, on his way to a new appointment at a nearby abbey, is kidnapped and burned alive. And while Simon is hunting these killers, a band of thieves move into the area and slaughter a traveling group of merchants. He has his hands full, but he finally sorts it all out.
Promising characters, beautiful settings, seemingly well-researched history, good plotting--I would definitely carry on with these and there are plenty of them. Oh boy!

The Judas Pair

The first of a several dozen novels in the "Lovejoy" series by Jonathan Gash (pen name for John Grant). These novels have been so popular that they also spawned a long running TV series (over 70 episodes from 1986-1994). That being said, I won't go out of my way to read another because I simply did not like the character. I am interested in antique and so when I ran across some discussion of this series, I tracked down the first installment. I was immediately put off as he slapped his lover in the very first chapter and generally continued to treat her like dirt, until she was killed, and then he went for revenge.
The story line revolved around a man coming to Lovejoy to help find a legendary pair of flintlock duelling pistols, the Judas Pair. This man believes his brother bought them and was then murdered by someone who stole the guns. Initially Lovejoy thinks the man is just deluded by his grief, but as he begins to accumulate evidence, he thinks that the guns may actually exist. It's just luck that he happens upon one of the tools that he thinks originally accompanied the cased set of pistols and uses that as bait to lure the killer to him, getting his girlfriend killed in the process (not his fault admittedly). He succeeds and almost dies himself in the process. Once he has figured out who the killer really is, he goes to confront him and is, not surprisingly, challenged to a duel using the infamous pair of pistols. He doesn't die, obviously, as he figures out why the pistols are named as they are and manages to turn the tables on the killer. Lots of really interesting information about antiques and antiques' dealers, especially in England. If Lovejoy were a nicer man, I would probably read more  of these, especially since I am also such an Anglophile. The plotting was very tight and clever, so if you can see past his misogynistic nature, go for it.

all these things i've done

I just re-read A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin (one of my favorite books of all time) and I remembered that I had another book of hers, a YA novel, that I had picked up several years ago at a library conference. So I dove right in and found it also so very satisfying. Interesting premise: the year is 2083, alcohol is available to anyone for the right price, water is getting scarce and expensive, chocolate and caffeine are illegal. This is in the U.S., not the rest of the world, where the chocolate cartels are making lots of money. But for the Balanchine family, the makers of Special Dark, this is no longer a source of legitimate income and so they have moved into less legal areas of enterprise. Anya (Annie) Balanchine is the 16-year-old protagonist, the 2nd oldest surviving child of Leonyd, the former head of the family. But he was murdered in his own study, with his two young daughters hiding under his desk at the time. His wife was shot while driving the family car; she died and son Leo, Jr. was injured and has never fully recovered his mental functioning. Their legal guardian is Nana, who is being kept alive by machines.
Annie is wrongly charged with poisoning the young man she broke up with after he tried to rape her, and she is sent to a detention center for several months. When she is released, she has to promise the  ambitious new Asst. District Attorney of New York City that she will not date his son, but she doesn't agree to stop being friends with him. Of course this future day Romeo and Juliet fall in love and everyone finds out. When Nana dies, brother Leo becomes the official guardian of his two sisters and Annie is determined to keep a low profile so the Children's Services people have no reason to come sniffing around and figure out that Leo is not really up to the job. Annie has wanted no part of "the family," but when brother Leo is manipulated into shooting his uncle, she has to step up or face losing her brother and the life she has so carefully constructed.
Really well developed characters--major and minor--who will engage adult as well as teen readers. Interesting plot line and plenty of room for the story to continue in the next two installments of this Anya Balanchine trilogy.

Cuba Straits

This book was my introduction to author Randy Wayne White, although he has apparently written a LOT of previous installments in the "Doc Ford" series. This is quite a wild ride and, although it would have been nice to have more of the background of the two main characters, it was still an enjoyable read. A wild ride, in fact. Doc is apparently a former CIA operative, now tentatively retired and sort of pursuing his other occupation as marine biologist. The book is set in southern Florida and, not surprisingly, Cuba. With the increased interest in visiting Cuba that follows the recent thaw in U.S.-Cuba relations, I imagine many would be interested in the book for that reason alone. What else? Well his long time pal, apparently, is a somewhat psychically tuned in and also frequently stoned PhD named Tomlinson. There is a lot of talk about baseball and both Ford and Tomlinson play in some senior tournaments. The story involves a former dictator of a small central American country, some stolen love letters from Castro (apparently both Raul and Fidel) to their shared mistress, an escaped from mental asylum in Havana shortstop named Figueroa, a motorcycle fanatic FSB (Russian secret police) bad guy, and of course a serial killer. You see what I mean about a wild ride. And I must not forget the two castaway young girls who are rescued by Ford from the Straits and returned home, only to fall into the hands of the serial killer. And the mistress of the Castros themselves plays a role, whether or not we choose to believe in power from the grave.  I would definitely read more from this guy. Quirky characters, wonderful setting descriptions, and plenty of action...absolutely!

Savage Season

This debut in the "Hap and Leonard" series of novels by Joe Lansdale pairs an east Texas disillusioned white guy with a brawny gay black Viet Nam veteran and they get into a LOT of trouble. The books are the basis of a soon-to-be-released (March 3, 2016) Sundance TV mini-series called, not surprisingly, "Hap and Leonard."
Hap is nearly 40 and served a stint in jail when he refused to fight in the Viet Nam war, not because he was a conscientious objector, but because he did not agree with this particular war. He was willing to take his punishment for standing up for his ideals, but what soured him was coming home to find his wife Trudy had gotten tired of waiting and taken off with another man. Since then, Hap has just been working odd jobs, a lot of them just hard physical labor. His friend Leonard raises hunting dogs and we don't find out, in this first book at least, how the two of them got acquainted.
Ex-wife Trudy shows up with a deal that promises to make them all a lot of money and Hap talks Leonard into taking part, since it requires finding a car driven into the Sabine River and Leonard had more experience with diving. The car is just the first step, however, as what they are really seeking is a boat that was scuppered nearby containing the booty from a bank heist--maybe a million dollars. Unfortunately, they have to work with a trio of self-professed revolutionaries who plan to use the money to carry on their various good causes. When the car, boat, and money are found, there is less than half the expected amount and the tables quickly turn. The "revolutionaries" need ALL the money to buy guns to carry on the good fight, so Hap and Leonard are screwed--they are going to get nothing. However, they get dragged along to the gun buy as insurance that they won't go to the police. Then everyone is betrayed when it turns out that one of the do-gooders, Paco, is really out to take all the money. The gun dealer and his girlfriend are sociopaths who also want all the money and don't care who has to suffer or die in the process of their getting it.
More information on the book and the characters are here. There are already about 8 or 9 additional books in the series. The jury is still out for me. I am not yet enamored of the characters, but perhaps they will grow on me. I have to admit that the trailers for the TV show look interesting...