Category Archives: V.I. Warshawski series

2013 Wrap-up

Posted on by
Reply

I’m racing the clock to get the rest of my opinions and reflections about 2013 books and reading posted before 2013 ends, so bullet points are the way to go:

  •   I forgot to include Sisters on the Case, edited by Sara Paretsky, in the bit about Mr. K’s bookstore.  I was happy to find a clean paperback copy of this mystery  anthology on my trip to the bookstore, and started reading it as soon as I got home.  I might have read this a long time ago, but I enjoyed it anyway.
  • My current hiatus book is Harry Truman’s Excellent Adventure: The True Story of a Great American Road Trip, by Matthew Algeo.  Harry and Bess Truman were so strapped for cash after he left the presidency, this trip by car from Independence MO to New York and back was motivated as much by frugality as adventure.  The book started with a lot of information about Harry Truman’s background and political history that I already know, and it feels like a long slog to get to the story of the Trumans’ trip across America, meeting Americans without the protection or inhibiting effect of the Secret Service.  Truman is a favorite subject of mine, so I hope I can get back into this Kindle book and get swept into the journey with Harry and Bess.
  • I have had one book on hiatus so long, I’m giving up.  I borrowed The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan, from Amazon’s Prime Kindle lending library more than a year ago, and it needs to go back.  Timothy Egan is a wonderful writer and one of my favorite NYT columnists, as well as a fellow product of the Great Pacific Northwest, and this book about the suffering endured by people during the Dust Bowl is justly famous, but I just can’t get into it.
  • I can’t decide whether to give up on Sweet Tooth, by Ian McEwan, and pass it along or not.  I bought this used hardback because I thought it was one of the books the book group was going to read, worked halfway through it, then found out the book wasn’t on the list.  I wasn’t enjoying it, didn’t care about any of the characters in this lukewarm John Le Carre pastiche, and I haven’t tried to continue reading it since.
  • When I was writing about the new mysteries series books I’ve found, and reminiscing about old favorite series, I found out that there are V.I. Warshawski books I haven’t read.  Vic is Sara Paretsky’s hardboiled Chicago private eye, first and likely greatest of the tough women detective heroines.  I have the first seven books in the series, and the collection of short stories, but there are nine more in the series.  I discovered I’ve read but do not own four of them, and recall I found them overly preachy about social issues (that concern me too!) to the detriment of the quality of the books. Subsequent books in the series fell off my radar screen, but there are four recent ones that sound pretty good.  I’d like to see if Vic has gotten her sleuthing mojo back.
  • While I was trying to work out how many books Sara Paretsky has written, and in what order, I found a fantastic website called OrderOfBooks.  It’s exactly what the name says: you put in the name of a series or the name of an author, and you get a list of the books in order of publication.  Love it, also looked up the Elvis Cole series, there is a total of 15 books.
  • How could I forget Sneaky Pie Brown when I was listing favorite mystery series!  Grey tiger cat Sneaky Pie Brown helped Rita Mae Brown write her series about Mary Minor ‘Harry’ Haristeen and her sleuthing pets, grey tiger cat Mrs. Murphy and corgi Tee Tucker.  I have a lot of the books in this series, but kind of went off it when the books started getting really far-fetched and seemed more of an opportunity for Rita Mae Brown to vent her libertarian politics than fun mystery stories.  Once you’ve accepted the premise of a sleuthing cat and dog, and the first books were good enough that I did, it would seem difficult to get too far-fetched down the line, but Rita Mae Brown’s editor let her get away with it.
  • I loved The Lincoln Lawyer, by Michael Connelly, both the book and the movie, and it looks like Mickey Haller, the Lincoln lawyer, has a series.  I look forward to reading more of his exploits.
  • I won $100 in a sports bar Bingo game (yes, there is such a thing) and used part of it to buy lovely new Penguin trade paperback editions of W. Somerset Maugham’s Collected Short Stories, volumes 1, 2 and 4.  I have read my old copies to tatters, and was afraid they would fall apart in my hands if I tried to read them again.  My Volume 3 is still in good shape, those are the stories about Ashenden the spy, and I don’t like them that much.  W. Somerset Maugham wrote fabulous short stories, and I still love reading my favorites again and again.  I was delighted that Mary Anne and Will Schwalbe of The End of Your Life Book Club loved the stories too.
  • Finally, my lesson learned about book blogging is that if I don’t write about a book I’ve read on Kindle in a timely fashion, I can’t look at the back cover book description or flip through the pages to remind myself of characters’ names or plot points in the story.  I can look on Amazon to glean some of this information, but then I risk picking up and repeating other readers’ opinions about the book.  Also, it’s hard to get caught up on writing about dozens of books I’ve read over a period of months in the last week of the year.  So glad I did it though, it’s been fun remembering all the great, good and fun stuff I’ve read in 2013.  My New Year’s resolution is:

Keep the blog writing on pace with the book reading!!

and lose 10 pounds.

Series Roundup

Posted on by
Reply

I have had favorite mystery series for a long time: Deborah Knott (Margaret Maron), Mrs. Pollifax (Dorothy Gilman), V.I. Warshawski (Sara Paretsky), Tess Monaghan (Laura Lippman), Jane Whitefield (Thomas Perry) and of course Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple and Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey.  This year I had the good luck to discover five new book series:  Historical mysteries Maisie Dobbs (Jacqueline Winspear), Maggie Hope (Susan Elia MacNeal) and Phryne Fisher (Kerry Greenwood); historical thriller Cotton Malone (Steve Berry) and hardboiled detective thriller Elvis Cole (Robert Crais).  I’ve written about Maisie Dobbs and Maggie Hope in other posts; in this one I want to summarize the Cotton Malone and Elvis Cole books I’ve read so far, as well as the second Phryne Fisher book.

Steve Berry’s Cotton Malone historical thrillers are chock-full of detailed historical information and lots of heroic derring-do and villains plotting deviously.  The struggles between the heroes and villains take place in contemporary times, with the underlying history of each struggle revealed as the plot hurtles forward.  Eight Cotton Malone novels have been published to date, with the ninth due in May 2014.  I have finished the first three so far.

  1. The Templar Legacy:  This is Berry’s fourth book and first in the Cotton Malone series.  It was written not long after the huge success of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, and both books share ‘the lost secrets of ancient power’ theme.  But hey, Da Vinci Code spawned a lot of imitators, and Steve Berry has got to be one of the better ones, with his own distinctive voice and competence as a writer.  Briefly:  After his abrupt retirement from a stressful career as a covert operative for the U.S. Justice Department, Cotton Malone runs a bookstore in Copenhagen.  He finds out that his old boss is in Denmark on personal business, and quickly comes to her aid as the personal business turns mysterious and deadly.  Their search for the villainous perpetrators and the race to the secret of the Templars’ treasure converge near an ancient monastery in France.  The pace isn’t as peppy as Dan Brown’s, but the history is more detailed and fully developed. (library eBook)
  2. The Alexandria Link: Cotton Malone’s peaceful existence as a Copenhagen bookstore owner is again shattered when he learns that his teenage son Gary is being held hostage to force Cotton to reveal the secret that will lead to the lost Library of Alexandria.  Cotton’s bitter ex-wife Pam helps him rescue Gary from the kidnappers,  and joins him and some other good guys in following clues across Europe and to the lost Library’s hiding place in the Sinai.  I liked this one; the subject of the Alexandria library felt fresh, and Cotton and his friends and family are good company on an exciting chase. (library e-Book)
  3. The Venetian Betrayal:  This one was goofy.  The story of Alexander the Great and his tragic love for his friend whatshisname is boring, and the mystery of Alexander’s lost grave is a stale subject.  Cotton Malone and friends race the whack-job female dictator of a newly independent Central Asian country and her minions to the lost grave, where a secret elixir of great power is buried with Alexander and his chum.  The plot is convoluted and dull at the same time, but I still liked Cotton Malone’s determination and the loyalty and cooperation he shares with his friends.  I got this one from the lunch bunch book swap, and the library seems to have all the other books on eBook, so Cotton Malone is a no-cost guilty pleasure.

The first book I read by Robert Crais, The Two-Minute Rule, was from the lunch bunch book swap, and was a good book and still, so far, my favorite.  I paid $1.99 for another one, Chasing Darkness, when it popped up as a Kindle Daily Deal.  This book introduced me to Robert Crais’ series detective Elvis Cole, who was worth tracking down in the public library’s eBook holdings.  There are a LOT of Elvis Cole books; I have read three so far, I think in reverse order of publication date:

  • Chasing Darkness:  As a forest fire sweeps down a Los Angeles canyon to a cluster of houses, a policeman evacuating residents from the area discovers a very dead body in one of the houses.  Evidence found with the body of Lionel Byrd points to the dead man as a serial killer of young women.  When Elvis Cole hears about the death, he realizes that, as investigator for Byrd’s defense lawyer in a trial two years ago, he found the evidence that set Byrd free, allowing him to kill more women.  Cole’s integrity and sense of guilt drive him to discover what really happened and the depth of his own culpability.  I think this is one of the later books in the series, and the kind of book I enjoyed reading at the time, but now remember very little about.  In such situations, a glance at the blurbs on a real book and a quick flip through the pages help to jog the memory; with Kindle books, I have to check on Amazon.
  • The Last Detective:  This one was very good.  Elvis is taking care of his girlfriend’s 10 year old son, when the boy is snatched while playing in the canyon behind Elvis’s house.  When the kidnapper calls, he accuses Elvis of committing atrocities as a soldier in Vietnam, and demands a large ransom in reparation and to return the boy.  Elvis and his stoic friend Joe Pike search for clues to discover the real reason for the kidnapping and find the boy, as the child’s millionaire father arrives in Los Angeles to hysterically meddle in the efforts to rescue his son.  Elvis’s anguish as the child remains in terrible danger and his cherished relationship with his girlfriend unravels is very realistic, and the impact is memorable – although I can’t remember the names of the child, the girlfriend, or her ex-husband.  (library eBook)
  • Stalking the Angel:  Didn’t like this one, all the characters Elvis deals with in his case are nasty.  As I remember, there is a stolen antique samurai manual of great value, a nasty businessman, his weird daughter and idiot wife, the Japanese underworld, a cult, and too much gruesomeness.  Since this book came early in the series, however, there is quite a bit of information about the tough beat-up former stray cat that is a fixture of Elvis’s household, as well as more backstory for tough guy Joe Pike.  The book has still soured me a little on the series.  I think I will try another one of the well-reviewed stand alone books next.

I read Flying Too High, the second book in the Phryne Fisher series set in 1920s Melbourne, Australia.   In this book, a young man who owns a flying school is suspected of the bludgeoning death of his unpleasant father, and the young man’s mother and sister ask Phryne to help clear his name.  In the book’s other investigation, Phryne and her cohorts Dot, Cecil and Bert search for the kidnapped daughter of a lottery winner.  The little girl is feisty and precocious, her distraught family is sweet, and the kidnappers are both bumbling and menacing.  Book Phryne is still not as adorable as TV Phryne on Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, but the books are fun, and make me appreciate the TV series even more.

I am not-so-patiently waiting for Margaret Maron’s next Deborah Knott book to come out in August 2014, and in the meantime I’m happy I found some good series books to read.  I read through all of my other favorite series books long ago – or so I thought.  I went on Amazon to check the correct spelling of Sara Paretsky’s first name, and discovered that Paretsky has been writing more V.I. Warshawski novels!  Vic was one of the first and greatest tough female detectives, and I’m excited to discover she’s still around.