Category Archives: Series

2013 Wrap-up

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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

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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.

Maisie Dobbs series, by Jacqueline Winspear

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I think my greatest reading joy this year was discovering Maisie Dobbs, the ‘psychologist and investigator’ who survived service as a nurse on the Great War battlefields of France, only to be reminded of the horrors of the war as she undertakes cases involving other war veterans still suffering in its long aftermath.  I have read books 1-8 in the series, and I need to keep track of the storyline of each one.  The first book, Maisie Dobbs, made such a vivid impression on me that I still remember its details months after reading it.  I knew I had loved the other books in the series, but couldn’t match the stories and characters I remembered to their specific titles.  I had to turn to Amazon to jog my memory for each book, but once jogged, I managed to sort my impressions into useful, though compressed, order.

Throughout the series, the memories of the Great War smoothly and continuously inform the structure of the books.  I thought that Jacqueline Winspear would run out of the ideas and skill to keep incorporating details about the war into each book, but she does a wonderful job in developing different aspects for every story.  We visited Britain last July, after I was thoroughly immersed in the series, and I found that the many memorials to the dead of the Great War had a much deeper impact on me than before.  I was especially moved by the glorious Five Sisters stained glass window at York Cathedral, restored in honor of the nurses of the Great War.  I’d never particularly noticed such tributes to nurses, and all medical battlefield personnel, before reading Maisie Dobbs.

I’m sure I will reread these books at some point, and this post will provide a base for expanding on my thoughts.  I have been saving the last two books for special treats, but I just scored a great Cheap Kindle Book deal on Elegy for Eddie, the next one in the series ($2.99!) so this is definitely the time to start treating myself.

  1. Maisie Dobbs:  In 1929, Maisie Dobbs starts a private investigation business on her own following the retirement of her partner and mentor Maurice Blanche.  As Maisie investigates her first case, centered on a mysterious grave marked only with the name Vincent, there are flashbacks to Maisie’s job as a maid, at age 13, in Lord and Lady Compton’s London mansion.  Flashbacks continue with accounts of Lady Rowan Compton’s discovery of Maisie’s eager intellectual curiosity, which leads to her education with Maurice Blanche and studies at Cambridge.  With the outbreak of the Great War, Maisie volunteers as a military nurse in France, where she meets up again with a dedicated young doctor she met in her Cambridge days.  Maisie’s experiences at medical stations just behind the battle lines are amazingly vivid and realistic, and establish the strength, intuition and compassion of her character with authority.  As Maisie’s investigation in 1929 progresses, she finds that Vincent had lived and died in the long shadow of the Great War, and the shadow awakens her own traumatic war memories, and those of her office assistant Billy Beale.  This book didn’t just capture my attention, it captured my heart.  Jacqueline Winspear’s grandfather lived through the Great War and the long shadow of its aftermath, and she must have breathed in the fear, melancholy and courage of the stories told by her family and their friends about that time, so that she could share them with readers in this incredible book.  (paperback)   
  2. Birds of a Feather:  The feather of the title is the white feather left at each of the different murder scenes of three women.  Maisie is drawn into the murder inquiries after she accepts an assignment to find the missing daughter of a wealthy grocery tycoon.  Once again, the origins of the mystery lie in personal tragedies of the Great War.  (Kindle) 
  3.  Pardonable Lies:  In the fall of 1930, Maisie reluctantly returns to France to determine the fate of a young aviator who disappeared during the war.  When her Cambridge friend Priscilla Evernden learns Maisie is coming to France, she asks Maisie to also look into the circumstances of her beloved brother’s death in the war.  Maisie’s fears that her return to France will bring back the horrors of her own war experiences come all too true, and she also learns some unwelcome truths about her mentor Maurice Blanche’s activities during the war.  (Kindle)
  4. Messenger of Truth:  It’s 1931, and a former Cambridge classmate of Maisie’s asks her to investigate the death of her artist brother Nick Bassington-Hope.  The police determined that the death was the result of an accidental fall, but Georgina Bassington-Hope isn’t convinced.  Once again, the case draws Maisie back into the devastating consequences of the war for veterans like Nick.  As the memories of the war fade for the greater British population, a new menace, the economic devastation of the Great Depression takes hold, and Maisie is appalled at the deep divide between the hard hit working people and people like the eccentric Bassington-Hope family, whose members seem resolved to separate both Nick’s war memories and contemporary economic suffering from their sheltered lives.  The resolution of the investigation includes a foreshadowing of the coming second World War.   (Kindle)
  5. An Incomplete Revenge:  The Comptons’ son James has returned to lead the family business, and asks Maisie to look into mysterious crimes taking place in a Kent village where he plans to make a major investment in land.  Maisie’s assistant Billy Beale, an increasingly important character in his own right, and his family come to Kent each year for the hop harvest, and he accepts an undercover assignment as Maisie’s eyes and ears in the village.  The conflict between  a group of gypsies Maisie befriends and the locals, who are harboring a deadly secret dating from the Great War, adds to the menace of the situation.  With the gypsies, Maisie finds wisdom and healing for some of her painful war memories, as well as a reconnection with her dead mother’s heritage.  I found her friendship with a gypsy dog, the lurcher Jook, a particularly poignant part of the story.  (Kindle)  
  6. Among the Mad:  At Christmas time in 1931, Maisie is a horrified witness to the suicide of a severely disabled war veteran on a busy street.  As a witness, and then because of her reputation as a psychological investigator, she is drawn into an elite police force’s intense hunt for a deranged man who has threatened mass murder as retaliation for the suffering of forgotten veterans.  The threat becomes very real as mysterious deaths in London reveal the killer’s capabilities.  At the same time, Maisie’s assistant and friend Billy and his family are forced to contend with the hazards of treatments for the mentally ill in 1930s Britain.  Maisie’s connections with prominent members of the mental health profession are vital in the race to find the killer, and to help Billy’s family.   (Kindle)
  7. The Mapping of Love and Death:  When a diary and love letters are found with the remains of an American cartographer killed on a battlefield of the Great War, his wealthy parents ask Maisie to locate the mysterious nurse their son loved.  Michael Clifton’s adventurous spirit and integrity and his work as a cartographer are described so well that the tragedy of his death is very real.  When Maisie begins to suspect that he may have been murdered instead of dying in combat, the amorality  and horror of the crime and the menacing presence of the killer are so strong I could feel it.  As Maisie works to find justice for Michael, she must also face the impending loss of her mentor Maurice Blanche and resolve her differences with him.  This book made the greatest impression on me since reading the original book in the series.   (library eBook)  
  8. A Lesson in Secrets:  The British Secret Service assigns Maisie to work undercover as a junior lecturer at a college in Cambridge observing pacifist college members suspected of Communist sympathies.  The founder of the college, author of a pacifist children’s book banned during the Great War for reputedly inspiring soldiers to mutiny on the battlefield, is murdered soon after Maisie arrives.  As Maisie assists with the murder investigation, as well as her original assignment to uncover conspiracy, she discovers that a growing German/British Nazi group could be the real threat.  In London Sandra, another former housemaid in the Compton household, asks Maisie and Billy to investigate the suspicious death of her husband Eric in an accident at his job in a garage.  Eric’s death hits even harder because he was the Comptons’ former chauffeur and helped Maisie take care of the beloved MG she bought from Lady Rowan Compton in the first book in the series and has driven ever since.  While I found the spy and conspiracy plot in this book less than compelling, the prominence and further development of series characters like Billy, Priscilla, Sandra, Frankie and James was a spot-on delight.  (library eBook)    
  9. Elegy for Eddie  (Kindle)
  10. Leaving Everything Most Loved

The Public Library and I enter the digital age.

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Actually, public libraries have been in the digital age for a while now, but I just started borrowing eBooks from my public library last June.  This is all thanks to my wonderful friend Lois G. who convinced me that digital borrowing wasn’t quite as complicated as it sounded, and was worth the trouble.  She gave me some guidance on which menus to click on which screens, and, after I had worked up my courage for a few days, I got started.

One of the hardest parts was finding a book to borrow.  I have an extensive list of books I would like to read, and I tried some titles and authors once I got into the eBook library, but they didn’t have any of them.  Prolific cosy mystery author Carolyn Hart was on my list, and when I put in her name, one of her books, Ghost in Trouble, was actually available to borrow.  Once I found a book, I went through the screen prompts to put it on my Kindle.  I hit a snag when the screen told me my circa 2009 Kindle 2 didn’t have the necessary whatsit to receive the book directly, I would have to download it through the USB port.  After much random button pushing that did not make the book appear on my Kindle (properly plugged into the USB port), I finally discovered My Kindle Library on my Amazon account online.  Never knew that was there.  Ghost in Trouble had made it into my Library, I hit the correct button and there it was on the Kindle.

Ghost in Trouble is about someone named Bailey Ruth who died, went to heaven, and goes back to earth sometimes to solve mysteries.  As a ghost, Bailey can change her clothes and hairstyles at will, and Carolyn Hart describes each outfit in detail.  The plot actually wasn’t bad, but the cutesy ghost was irritating.  As a first try at borrowing an eBook, Ghost in Trouble was a great success; the book itself, not so much.  This is what public libraries are for: trying new authors.  Maybe some of Hart’s other cosy series are OK, but this one didn’t do it for me.

Since then, I’ve had much better success finding books.  I borrowed the first two books from Susan Elia MacNeal’s Maggie Hope series:  Mr. Churchill’s Secretary and Princess Elizabeth’s Spy.  In 1940, American Maggie Hope shares the London house she inherited from her grandmother with a group of other young women.  A friend gets British-by-birth Maggie a job on Winston Churchill’s secretarial staff, where she seizes the chance to use her mathematical education and code breaking skills to get unofficially involved in espionage.  Churchill himself is a character in Mr. Churchill’s Secretary, and the unraveling of a plot to assassinate him is central to the book.  Details about life in wartime Britain support the story, although I find Maggie a little too opinionated and brash for the period. The Brits don’t seem to mind, especially when she puts her life on the line to thwart the assassins.  Princess Elizabeth’s Spy is the second book in the series, with Maggie Hope, now a member of British Intelligence, assigned to protect a young Princess Elizabeth.  Princess Elizabeth and other members of the royal household are characters in the book, and the author does a good job with the people and the setting.  Maggie’s friends and coworkers in these books are often interesting in their own right, and have their own concerns and important roles to play in the action.  These books don’t have the substance of the Maisie Dobbs books, but they are good historical mysteries.

I was well into the Maisie Dobbs series when I discovered library eBooks, and was happy to borrow The Mapping of Love and Death and A Lesson in Secrets, the 7th and 8th books in the series.  I love the way Maisie and the people she knows change and develop as the books progress.  There is a real sense of time passing in this series, and Maisie matures and grows deeper and more interesting in each book.  I’ve actually put off reading the last two books, because I will be sad when they are over.

I put a hold on The Bridge of Sighs, by Olen Steinhauer, and didn’t have to wait too long to borrow it.  The hold system is great:  you can see how many holds are before you, and an e-mail notification comes when the book is available.  The Bridge of Sighs is one of Steinhauer’s Eastern Europe novels, set in a grim post-World War II Communist country full of brutality and corruption.  The characters were dull and/or venal, and it just wasn’t interesting.  I thought the Milo Weaver novels I’ve read, The Tourist and The Nearest Exit, were much better.

I also found more books by two other authors I recently discovered, Steve Berry and Robert Crais.  I borrowed The Templar Legacy and The Alexandria Link, the first two books in Berry’s Cotton Malone series.  Berry might sensationalize history, but he knows enough about the facts to keep things in hand.  I also read The Third Secret, one of Steve Berry’s stand alone books and found the Catholic conspiracy plot confusing and a little slow .  I borrowed one of Robert Crais’ Elvis Cole novels, The Last Detective, and thought it wasn’t just a good thriller, it was a good novel.  I didn’t like the next Elvis Cole book I borrowed, Stalking the Angel, nearly as much.  This is an earlier book in the series, and it was violent, and most of the characters were awful, with no redeeming qualities.  I was disappointed.

On-line borrowing seems to work best when I’m looking for books by popular authors I already know about.  There are too many books in each category and the system is too slow to make browsing easy.  The tricky thing is getting the timing of the loans right:  two weeks go by very quickly, especially if I have other things to read.

Discovering new (to me) authors

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I’ve been reading a lot since March, and have a lot of catching up to do in writing blog posts.  I need to organize the reading into a few broad categories, and I’ve already started with the Tried and True and Book Club posts.  I’m pleased that so many of the books I’ve read are by new authors, and I want to start by loosely organizing those books and authors into this post.  I will write in more detail about some of them in other posts.

I discover most new authors through recommendations from readers I know.  Two of the best recommendations I’ve had this year were for Jacqueline Winspear, author of the wonderful Maisie Dobbs series, and Susan Elin MacNeal, who writes the Maggie Hope series.  A member of the CCR book club recommended Maisie Dobbs, and my friend Lois G. recommended Maggie Hope.  I might have discovered these wonderful historical mysteries on my own sooner or later, but it’s just as likely that I wouldn’t have. 

I heard about another author, Steve Berry, at a picnic to celebrate our friend Ann’s U.S. citizenship.  During a group conversation about books, the topic of Dan Brown’s historical conspiracy-based bestselling thrillers came up, and, while most of us had read all or some of them, there were a couple of disparaging remarks about Brown’s signature writing style and lurid far-fetched plots.  Somebody remarked that an author named Steve Berry was a better historian and better writer than Dan Brown, and that his Cotton Malone series is good.  I just finished my third Cotton Malone novel, and I’ve also read one of Berry’s stand-alone books, so I’m enjoying this recommendation.        

I also find new authors in the book swap at the once-a-month lunches organized by Dave (Dave’s Lunch Bunch).  I enjoyed The Two-Minute Rule, by Robert Crais, and this accomplished author of thrillers is a great find.  I didn’t find The Alibi, by Sandra Brown, that good.  Sandra Brown is a prolific mystery/suspense writer, and I should give her another chance.  It looks like the library has a lot of her books.

Amazon is a good source of recommendations on new-to-me authors, as well as new books by familiar authors.  I love browsing the book titles that show up in the ‘Customers who bought this item also bought’ scroll bar.  This is how I found The Monuments Men, by Robert Edsel, an unusual non-fiction take on World War 2:  Army art curators and architects who were assigned to protect and retrieve some of the great art treasures of Western Europe.  Sometimes customer reviewers mention authors who they find similar to or better than the books under review.  And the Kindle Deal of the Day has introduced me to many new authors.  I have bought several $1.99 Kindle Deal books, and have even read some of them.  Sometimes a little new-author overlap goes on with the Deals.  I bought, read and enjoyed Chasing Darkness, by Robert Crais, the author I discovered in the swap pile.  I bought, read and found silly Lady Fortescue Steps Out, by M.C. Beaton, an author recommended in a customer review.  Books and authors I took a complete $1.99 chance on and liked are Berried to the Hilt (Gray Whale Inn mystery), by Karen MacInerney, and Dead Insider (Loon Lake mystery), by  Victoria Houston.  These are from detective series set, respectively, on an island off the Maine Coast and in northern Wisconsin.  The rest of the Deals purchased to date are awaiting my attention in the Kindle Stash.

Movies and TV shows based on books can also lead to some good reading.  I ordered a delightful Australian TV series called “Miss Fisher’s Mysteries” from Netflix, based on Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher series.  I read Cocaine Blues, the first book in the series, and the tone of the book is quite different than the TV series, and will take some getting used to.  Some of the recurring characters I liked most on the TV show have very minor roles in the book, and Phryne is sadder and more brittle than the sprightly, gorgeously dressed heroine on the show.  But – Phryne’s back story, thoughts and motivation are much more fully developed in the book, and she is a compelling and interesting character on the page.  And a beautiful little film called “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” led me to the excellent novel of the same name, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, by Paul Torday.  The novel is written in the form of e-mails, memos and interviews, and anyone who has ever worked in a bureaucracy will recognize the inexorable forces that can compel a competent, sane bureaucrat to work on a project as bonkers as introducing salmon to a river in the Yemeni desert.  The main characters in the book and the movie are the same, and the scheme to help an enigmatic Yemeni sheikh to transplant his beloved sport of salmon fishing to Yemen is still the same, but the characters’ fates are different.  In the movie, Ewan MacGregor and Emily Blunt logically have a happy ending; in the novel, the ending is sadder but just as logical.  Somebody did a great job of adapting a wonderful book into a wonderful movie.  The stories may vary, but the moral and emotional impact are the same. 

Newspaper book reviews and articles are also excellent resources for learning about new authors.  For me, the find of the year so far is The Cuckoo’s Calling, by Robert Galbraith.  Except, this is a bit of a new author cheat, since Robert Galbraith is a pen name for J.K. Rowling; her name was in the title of the online article, so I clicked on it.  The Cuckoo’s Calling is a detective novel, and the hero, Cormoran Strike, was in the military police until he lost a leg in Afghanistan.  J.K. Rowling is a wonderful author, and she sets up a great plot when Strike is hired to investigate the death of a fabulously successful fashion model, who was also the adopted daughter of a wealthy and spectacularly disfunctional family.  Like the later Harry Potter books, Rowling does get bogged down with too much detail and more plot twists than necessary toward the end of the book, but that is a comment, not a complaint.  The book is a great read and I loved it.  To make it extra special, a couple of pubs we visited on our trip to England had Doom Bar, Cormoran Strike’s favorite beer, on tap. It is delicious, although I didn’t drink it eleven pints at a time, like Strike does.

And then, there is browsing in bookstores, guaranteed to bring new authors to my attention, and new books onto my already crowded bookshelves.  This is why I very seldom go into bookstores, unless the bookstore is very special, like Blackwell’s in Oxford.  Blackwell’s is not only a thoroughly wonderful historical bookstore, it was also the sponsor and starting point of a walking tour of sites associated with the Inklings, the literary drinking club famously attended by C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.  Naturally, I bought The Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and Their Friends, by Humphrey Carpenter when we got back to Blackwell’s. I’ve since read most of it, and flipped through the rest, and all I can say is:  Nearly all of the book is about C.S. Lewis and C.S. Lewis was one strange person.  While I was in Blackwell’s, I resisted browsing further, but did pick up a book called The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England, by Ian Mortimer.  I’d seen the book in the giftshop at Clifford’s Tower in York, along with a novel called The White Queen, by Philippa Gregory, but didn’t have time to buy them then.  I bought The White Queen at a W.H. Smith bookstore in Heathrow Airport, my last chance, last book fling in the U.K.  There was a good “buy one, get one half off” deal there, so I also bought Standing in Another Man’s Grave, by Ian Rankin.  The White Queen is Elizabeth Woodville, the unsuitable woman who married England’s last York king, Edward IV, and the book is high-grade historical romance, with surprisingly good details about the last years of the Wars of the Roses underpinning the romantic doings.  A good, fun plane flight read.  The Ian Rankin book is his latest Inspector Rebus mystery, and it was excellent, so I’ll be looking out for more of his books.  I especially enjoyed Rebus’ comments on the extensive, disruptive roadworks in his hometown of Edinburgh; we had just visited Edinburgh, and the roadworks were still in full swing a year after the book was published.  

Great finds in new authors and new series, no worries about fulfilling my need to read for a while.

Tried and True

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I’ve been so busy reading that I haven’t made time to write in quite a while.  I have been keeping a list of what I’m reading, and the books kind of sort themselves into categories.  First one is the Tried and True, all books that I own by some of my favorite authors.

In my last post, I had just started reading Fatherland, by Robert Harris.  I read this book years ago, and the only thing I really remembered about it was the setting in a post World War II world where the Nazis didn’t lose.  I had a vague idea that the story was a murder investigation by a homicide detective in occupied Britain, but the murders and investigation happen in Germany.  I thought Harris did a great job of establishing the historical base of real people and events in Nazi Germany, then extrapolating forward to 1964, just before Hitler’s birthday celebration and a state visit by the U.S. president.  Harris’ hypothetical Berlin is a plausible setting for a standard issue maverick homicide detective with ex-wife issues who gets a lot more interesting as he stubbornly persists when a murder investigation takes him deep into the worst of past and present Nazi evildoing.  Robert Harris is a true favorite of mine; I wish he had written more books.

I have never been that interested in John Le Carre’s post Cold War books; I have several that I had bought but never read.  Our Game, written in 1995,  is one of the first, about a British intelligence cold warrior put out to pasture when his experience is no longer considered useful.  I found the storyline about the former agent and his gorgeous much younger girlfriend tedious, but then the girlfriend runs away with another former agent whose unquenchable idealism and adrenaline addiction take the story into the Chechnyan separatists’ fight against the Russians, and the history of their struggle is tragic and still timely.  I finished this book not long before the Boston Marathon bombings, and the way the information about the bombers and their family’s background in Chechnya and Dagestan meshed with the grim details in Our Game was eery. 

I read Mrs. Pollifax and the Lion Killer, and trusty Dorothy Gilman did a believable job with the cultural and political atmosphere of this good story set in the imaginary African country of Ubangiba.  Unfortunately, this is the last Mrs. Pollifax book and there will be no more.  Good thing I enjoy rereading books from this series.

My Deborah Knott series reread book was Killer Market, set in the furniture showrooms in High Point, North Carolina.  I haven’t been to High Point, but we’ve visited the huge furniture mall in Hickory NC; bought furniture there too.  Margaret Maron is good at researching the details for her books, and even better at folding them smoothly into the plot.  Love this series, am waiting impatiently for the next book.

I always need a collection of short stories on hand as a break or a stopgap.  The most recent ones I’ve read are by longtime favorites Agatha Christie and P.G. Wodehouse.  Christie’s Thirteen Problems (Miss Marple) and Labors of Hercules (Hercule Poirot).   were packed away in boxes for several years, so it was good to see them again.  I have several Christie short story books, but need to do research to see if there are any more of hers out there.  My current ‘need to read’ book is Meet Mr. Mulliner, by P.G. Wodehouse.  No Jeeves and Bertie Wooster in these short stories, but Mr. Mulliner and his many relations are classic in their own right. 

I have to admit that even I can reread books too many times:  I just about have the short story collections on my shelves committed to memory.  So I’ve started reading my Calvin and Hobbes books again, still incredibly good.  

 

Chewing gum for the brain

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Reading only “chewing gum” type books for a while is not a bad thing, I tell myself.  Nothing wrong with a well-written fast read with appealing characters and a good plot.  So I enjoyed popular novels by some old and new favorite authors over the holidays, and now I’m ready to get back to a mixed diet of solid non-fiction and more challenging novels, with some fun skim-through-the-middle stuff on the side. 

I read my last library book, The Nearest Exit by Olen Steinhauer, and enjoyed it very much.  This is the second Milo Weaver book, and is even better than The Tourist.  Good backstory about meeting his wife years before, and a well worked out plot.  I usually don’t like flashback books that much, but these flashbacks are really well done and serve the story.  I’ll try some of Steinhauer’s East European novels next.

Christmas Stalkings was a seasonal selection, a good anthology of new (in 1991) and classic mystery stories, all set around Christmas.  This is my book, and I’ve read it before, but it was in storage for several years and the stories seemed fresh, as well as very good fun.

I also skimmed through Bloody Kin, by Margaret Maron.  This is the first book she wrote with the Colleton County NC setting; Deborah Knott, who later got her own excellent series, is a secondary character in this book.  Deborah’s brother-in-law. his wife Kate and her extended family are the main characters in Bloody Kin, and their family has an important role in the latest Deborah Knot mystery, The Buzzard Table.  It has been a very long time since I’ve read Bloody Kin and I wanted to refresh my memory of these characters’ story.  Good book, worth digging it out of my paperback stacks.  It also inspired a fit of nostalgia about two other favorite writers, Dorothy Gilman and Helen MacInnes.

Dorothy Gilman wrote some good stand-alone novels, but she is best known for the Mrs. Pollifax books, another favorite series of mine.  Mrs. Pollifax is an elderly lady who spies for the CIA from time to time: feisty, open-minded, not as twee as she sounds.  Gilman does a credible job of researching the people, geography and current political issues of the times and countries where Mrs. Pollifax has her adventures, which makes them informative as well as fun.  Although the author and her character have both sometimes been gushily positive over foreign political movements that look less attractive in retrospect, Mrs. Pollifax is an endearing, honest and moral character and I always enjoy spending time with her.  Amazon had the last three Pollifax books – Mrs. Pollifax Unveiled (set in Syria); Mrs. Pollifax, Innocent Tourist (Jordan); and Mrs. Pollifax and the Lion Killer (the imaginary but credible African country of Ubangiba) - in inexpensive paperback editions, so I bought them to complete my Mrs. Pollifax series.  I also bought the second Madame Karitska book, Kaleidoscope, for my Kindle, reasonably priced and the only version currently available in print.  Kaleidoscope, and the first book, The Clairvoyant Countess, are episodic novels that are almost like individual short stories, so great for picking up, putting down and picking up again later.  I have read all of the new purchases except Lion Killer; I got sidetracked by one of my old Pollifax books, Mrs. Pollifax and the Second Thief (set in Sicily). 

All of Helen MacInnes’ books are currently out of print, and the library doesn’t have them, so I bought North from Rome (1958) and The Venetian Affair (1963) from two of Amazon’s used booksellers – one even had free shipping through Amazon Prime.  Both are in good condition considering their very reasonable prices; I’ve had good luck so far in all my Amazon used bookseller purchases.  The books are two of MacInnes’ best Cold War thrillers; rather earnest and prim, which I suppose fits the time in which they were written, but good, exciting, well-written novels.  A publisher will start issuing reprints of the MacInnes books in both paperback and Kindle editions starting with Above Suspicion and Pray for a Brave Heart at the end of January, with more following every four to six weeks.  Very glad to see this author’s books on the market again and available to new readers.   

I also bought a used copy of Crime through Time II through Amazon – the book cost 1 cent, and 3.99 for shipping, which is a pretty good deal for a paperback in good condition.  The book’s short stories are a mixed lot as far as quality, and too many are set in Ancient Times, the most boring and un-credible settings for me.

Last, I read two books from the monthly senior lunch book swap:  Lie Down with Lions, by Ken Follett, and The Jackal’s Head, by Elizabeth Peters.  I have never enjoyed any of Follett’s books as much as I did The Eye of the Needle and The Key to Rebecca, and I’m no more enthusiastic about Lie Down with Lions.  The setting in Afghanistan during the Soviet Russian occupation is interesting, but the characters and plot are clunky and over familiar.  I know Follett wrote a lot of books, so I’ll keep trying, as long as I don’t have to pay any money for them (keep checking the library).  The Jackal’s Head has Peters’ (too) familiar Egyptian archaeology setting, but in modern times for this one.  Libraries always seem to have lots of Elizabeth Peters’ books, and they turn up often in book swaps, so I can easily indulge this guilty pleasure (they are fun), and then take the books back where they came from, or pass them on to another book swap.