Stoned by Aja Raden

 

Most of us are fascinated with jewels.  Their beauty and rarity attract us.  In this book, historian and jeweler Aja Raden uses the history of various jewels to show how they affected human history.  The book is divided into three main sections, want, take and have.

In the want section, the reasons we desire jewels is explored.  It is often a manufactured desire and Radan gives examples of this, the best being diamonds.  Diamonds are actually very common so why do we think they are rare and beautiful?  Because the De Beers company managed to corner the market on diamonds and spent a fortune on marketing along with controlling the number of diamonds that hit the market at any one time.  Another example was the purchase of Manhattan Island for the proverbial twenty-four dollars of glass beads.  However, the Indians didn't have glass beads and so they were entranced with those shown to them by the Dutch and were happy with their end of the bargain.  The third story is that of the massive number of emeralds taken by the Spanish explorers from Central and South America and how it funded the Spanish empire.  When they became too common, the market collapsed almost overnight.

In the take section, there are several interesting stories.  One is of a famous pearl that was given to Queen Mary by her younger and distant husband, Prince Philip.  Her half sister, Elizabeth craved the pearl and the interplay between the two women is explored.  Another famous necklace with historical implications was a diamond necklace that a jeweler tried for years to sell to Marie Antoinette.  She never bought it, but the jeweler was tricked into thinking she had, and the scandal was one of the factors making her the hated monarch she was.  A final story in this section is about the Faberge eggs and how their history was intertwined with that of the Russian monarchy.

In the have section, two items were discussed.  The first was pearls, specifically cultured pearls and the role that the Japanese manufacturer Mikimoto played in bringing them to market and making them acceptable as luxury items as well as being jewelry that anyone could find a price point at which to buy.  The other item was wristwatches and I found it fascinating that wristwatches are fairly modern with their acceptance as male jewelry coming only during World War I when split second timing was needed in the trenches to successfully use the new weapons of that war.

Aja Raden studied history in college while working in the auction house of the famous House Of Khan.  Later she worked as a jewelry designer.  These two careers and interests make her the right person to write this book.  At times the narrative is a bit breezy but it is relatable by almost any reader and provides an interesting overview of history and a unique focus through which to study it.  This book is recommended for nonfiction readers.  

Blood Orange by Harriet Tyce

 

From the outside, Alison's life was perfect.  She had a career as a lawyer and had just been assigned her first murder case.  She had a loving husband and an adorable little girl.  What more could she want?

But from the inside looking out, it doesn't seem so wonderful.  Alison spends her nights and weekends drinking way too much.  Her marriage has been full of tension since her husband lost his job and was rebuilding his career as a therapist from home.  Worst of all, she has been having an affair with a work colleague for about a year.  Each time they meet she swears it is the last but the next time she finds she can't say no.

Then the drinking gets much worse to where she is having blackouts.  She starts to get anonymous messages on her phone that seem to be calling her out for her affair.  Her home life gets worse and worse as her husband turns away further from her.  Can she pull things back?

This is a debut novel.  The author was a barrister for ten years before her first child was born.  That makes the legal part of the story realistic, the hurrying from case to case, the ability to talk with someone in crisis and find a way to make things better if possible.  The dissolution of the marriage is also written about in realistic terms.  The affair is portrayed as a constant betrayal not only of the woman's marriage but of her sense of herself as the man pushes her closer and closer to her boundaries.  This book is recommended for readers of psychological thrillers.

While Other People Sleep by Marcia Muller

 

Things are going well for San Francisco-based detective Sharon McCone when she first hears the news.  Her agency is buzzing along and she just hired a new investigator she has high hopes for.  She and her partner, Hy, are doing well in her personal life.  She isn't caught up in any high risk cases.  All in all, things are great.

Then she hears from a friend that someone was impersonating her at a galley opening.  The woman had a business card, in fact, one of Sharon's business cards, and was passing herself off as Sharon.  She looked much like Sharon although younger.  Although it gives her a moment of unease, Sharon decides to shrug it off as someone using her credentials to get in someone they might not otherwise be able to enter.

But it doesn't stop there.  Sharon starts to get more reports of the woman who has apparently decided to pass herself off as Sharon all over.  This is concerning.  It can impact the business, especially when Sharon starts to hear from men the imposter is picking up, sleeping with and convincing that they have slept with Sharon herself.  One of her staff has started acting strangely so much that their partner asks Sharon to look into it.  The woman impersonator starts leaving gifts around, showing up in the private parts of Sharon's life such as the airport where she and Hy keep their plane, and soon it's obvious the woman has broken into both the office and Sharon's home.  She orders things using Sharon's credit cards then cancels them.  What is her purpose?  How can Sharon find her before she does something worse?

This is the eighteenth novel in the Sharon McCone series. Readers of the series will be happy to encounter so many of the same characters from the earlier novels while those reading this as a stand alone will find enough material given that they don't feel lost.  The tension is slowly cranked up until a confrontation occurs that brings everything to a head.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.

Blood Grove by Walter Mosley

 

Easy Rawlins' life is going well at the moment.  His detective agency is ticking along.  His adopted daughter, Feather, has settled in and is thriving.  He has a girlfriend who definitely holds his interest. 1969 is going well for him although whiffs of unease and unrest are in the air in sunny California.   The last thing he needs is a young, white Vietnam vet for a client.

The young man shows up at Rawlin's office and is desperate for help.  He tells a disjointed story of taking a date to the blood orange groves he learned about as a child only to encounter a man there.  There is a fight and the man is knocked out.  When he awakes, his date and dog are gone and he suspects that he might have killed the man he fought with.  He wants Easy to find out if there has been a death and to locate his girlfriend and dog.  Rawlins is not inclined to take the case but his connection with other veterans tips the balance and he agrees to help the man.

Rawlins starts the investigation with help from various friends.  At home, there's another issue.  Another young white man has shown up and he is Feather's uncle.  He wants to meet her and while Easy knows Feather deserves to know her background and family history, he can't help but wonder what this will mean for the life he and Feather have built together.  

As the investigation deepens, Rawlins encounters con men, robberies, his client's mother who is a former dancer and prostitute, and plenty of racist cops.  This is the beginning of the Black Panthers and a realization by those of color that things need to change and this may be the time.  But there are plenty of people who don't believe change is necessary and they are willing to do whatever it takes to keep the status quo.  Bodies start to show up and Rawlins is determined to get to the bottom of it all.

I listened to this novel and the narrator is perfect.  His vocal style is like the main character's name, easy and smooth.  There are no disquieting pauses or breaks to interrupt the story's flow.  

This is the fifteenth novel in the Easy Rawlins series.  Walter Mosley is a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers Of America and has won numerous prizes for his crime series.  His work has also won several NAACP Image Awards as they portray an accurate vision of what racial prejudice means to those living in it and how things have started to change over the past fifty to sixty years.  The story in this novel is complex with many characters but everything is resolved satisfactorily by the end.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.  

Lost Light by Michael Connelly

 

Detective Harry Bosch is not an LAPD homicide detective any longer.  He has retired and several months in, he's pretty bored.  His thoughts turn to his cold cases, murders that didn't get solved which never set well with him.  He did get a private investigator's license so he decides why not poke around and get some answers?  Maybe the cases could be solved by someone who had nothing but time to devote to them instead of the constant interruption of new cases that handicapped investigations in the department. 

He decides on his first case.  A woman was found murdered in her apartment.  Several days later a robbery occurred that she seemed attached to.  A film about a robbery decided that only real money would do to be filmed and arranged to borrow two million in cash from a local bank.  The woman was a production assistant on the film.  But instead of filming the money, armed robbers appeared on the scene and made a getaway with the money.  Bosch had been there and wounded one of the robbers but they made their escape and had never been found, nor had the money.  The case went to the robbery division and the two detectives who headed the investigation didn't make much progress before their disaster.  The two men walked into a bar while a holdup was going on and a shootout occurred.  One was killed and the other was left a quadriplegic.  That pretty much made the case a cold one.

Bosch knows he won't get the cooperation he was used to as a detective with a badge but is surprised at the resistance he encounters as he investigates.  His former partner, moved into administration, turns up to warn him off the case.  The FBI are less polite.  They use intimidation to make it clear that this is their case as they believe one of their agents, now missing, is involved somehow.  But Bosch is determined to take the case to its conclusion and find out who killed the woman in the apartment all those years ago.  Will he be successful?

This is the ninth book in the Harry Bosch series.  Harry is the same determined man he was as an authorized detective and his tenaciousness and serious investigative skills make him a force.  His case takes him to Vegas where he reunites with his former love, Eleanor.  Readers of the series will remember their love and their breakup and will be cheering for them to reunite.  The mystery is tricky and Bosch sees things that would go over most people's heads; his dicey background making him adept at reading people and seeing duplicity that others would miss.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.

We Thought We Knew You by M. William Phelps

 

Mary Yoder along with her husband Bill ran a chiropractic clinic in upstate New York.  Bill was a bit older and about to retire.  Mary was sixty and did the majority of the patient work.  They had grown children and their youngest, Adam, was still in the area, going to college and trying to figure out what he wanted to do with his life.  He had a longtime girlfriend, Katie, who his parents had hired to work at the clinic as the receptionist and office person.

When Mary came home one day feeling ill, Bill didn't think much of it.  But she was so sick by the next morning that he took her to the hospital as a precaution.  The doctors admitted her but felt that it was a digestive virus that would quickly run its' course.  But Mary didn't get better.  She died the next day after coding multiple times.  

Her death was perplexing to the doctors and her family was in shock.  They quickly agreed to an autopsy to find out what had gone wrong.  What the autopsy showed left everyone reeling.  Mary Yoder had been poisoned by an obscure drug used to treat gout.  

The police immediately started an investigation.  Despite attempts to throw them off with anonymous letters, the truth emerged.  The poisoner was Katie.  She and Adam had broken things off, an occurrence that had happened many times over their relationship but this time Adam was serious about the breakup.  Katie had poisoned his mother to pay him back and to try to throw suspicion on him.  

The narrator for this book was not my favorite.  His voice was wheezy at times and as the book progressed became irritating.  However, he read well without stumbling and carried the narration through to its end. 

This case happened in 2015.  The author carries the case through Katie's trials and talks about the crime, the relationships and the heartache that an obsessed person can cause others as they single-mindedly pursue their goals.  There is an active group still convinced that Katie Conley was falsely accused and convicted.  The author offered to talk with them to get their side of events but they did not choose to participate in the book.  This book is recommended for true crime readers.

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

 

Blue has never lived the 'normal' life of a teenage girl.  How could she?  Raised in a house full of mediums and clairvoyants, she will always be considered weird by teenage standards.  Then there is the curse.  From a young age, Blue is told that she will kill her own true love and his death will come after kissing her.  That tends to make a girl standoffish as well.  Add in growing up poor and Blue doesn't have a covey of buddies.

But things are improving in Blue's life.  She meets four of the rich boys from the local private academy, Aglionby.  Blue has always avoided Aglionby guys or Raven Boys as she calls them from their mascot.  They are rich, entitled and only interested in local girls for sexual purposes.  But these four seem to be different.

Gansy is their leader.  He is confident and obsessed, determined to find an ancient king he believes is buried near this town.  Ronan has been Gansy's best friend since childhood but is grieving the death of his father and lashing out at all around him.  Adam is a local boy like Blue, also poor but on a scholarship to the academy which he views as his steppingstone out of his limited circumstances.  Nick is shy and on the fringes but Blue is comfortable around him.  Both Adam and Gansy seem attracted to Blue and she's not sure what to do about that.

As the five teenagers search for the ancient king, their search uncovers magic, real magic that they had hoped for but never really believed existed.  What secrets will the magic uncover and what danger will the five have to overcome?  Will they all survive?

This is the first book in the Raven Cycle series, a set of four books.  Blue is an interesting character, full of longings for a normal life and uncertain how to set about getting that.  The boys have very different personalities and one wonders what exactly has brought them together into the brotherhood they seem to have adopted.  This book leaves the reader interested in reading the rest of the cycle and is recommended for young adult and fantasy readers.

All The Devils Are Here by Louise Penny

 

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his wife Reine-Marie have left Quebec to come to Paris for a joyous occasion.  Their daughter Annie, married to Armand's former second in command, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, is about to give birth to a daughter.  Their son, Daniel, and his family are also living in Paris.  Making the occasion even more special, Armand's godfather, billionaire Stephen Horowitz, is in the city for a meeting as well.  The entire clan gathers for a dinner for all to catch up.  Afterwards, Armand walks Stephen back to his hotel but tragedy strikes.  Stephen is mowed down by a hit and run driver and must be rushed to the hospital.

Armand suspects that the accident was instead an assassination attempt.  Horowitz is a major figure in finance circles and he knows many secrets.  When a murdered man is found in the apartment Horowitz keeps in Paris, Armand's suspicions are confirmed.  Someone wants Stephen dead but why?

Although the French police are investigating, Armand is not sure they are doing a diligent job or taking Stephen's position into account.  He decides that he must investigate himself with the help of Jean-Guy and his various contacts in Paris.  The group quickly discovers that there is corruption involved that reaches to the head of corporations and the government itself.  Can they hope to solve the case and avert more tragedies?  Complicating matters is the fact that Armand and his son, Daniel, have been somewhat estranged for years and this estrangement blows up as it becomes clear that Daniel may also be involved.  

I listened to this novel and the narrator was excellent.  He had the perfect accent and his voice, while not emotional, was not deadpan.  It was a perfect reflection of a man in Armand's professional position who is now embroiled in a matter that touches his own family deeply.  Such a man is not overtly emotional but would not be able to successfully tamp down all emotions when his family is threatened.  The narrator was able to convey this with his change in tempo and inflections.

This is the sixteenth novel in this much beloved series.  It explores the Gamache family's relationships and old friendships while filling in much of the backstory of Gamache's early upbringing and the forces that shaped his life.  The mystery behind the assassinations and the degree of corruption is breathtaking and the reader is left hoping that it is not realistic while fearing that money and governments may be entwined in corruption as portrayed.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.

Trust Exercise by Susan Choi

 

The story begins at a highly competitive high school for the performing arts.  The place is New York, the time the early 1980's.  Mr. Kingsley is the lodestone around which the drama department revolves.  He uses his talent and access to force the students in his program to confront themselves and their fears, to trust each other and their talent.  Two students stand out.  David is handsome and rich but hesitant.  Sarah is an outsider, her contributions to the plays wardrobe mistress rather than onstage performer.  The two share a summer romance and then spend the next two years in a love-hate relationship that those around them recognize but who no one knows how to move forward.  

Then the book shifts.  We see the same events from the viewpoint of Karen twenty years later.  She was another student who stayed behind the scenes.  After a successful career as an executive assistant and organizer, she returns home to the city where they all grew up.  David is back in town also, working now as a producer and director.  Sarah has become an author and has a hugely successful book out.  When Karen reconnects with Sarah at an author signing in Los Angeles, their reminiscences lead to Sarah agreeing to come to the debut of David's next play, which Karen is starring in.  What happens there is surprising yet in some ways long overdue.

This novel won the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction.  It explores the relationships between teenagers with their overheated dramatic friendships.  It also delves into the trust that teachers demand from their students and how easily that trust can be abused.  Although none of the characters are particularly easy to relate with, their stories are fascinating and show the power of friendship and betrayal.  This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.

Widow's Web by Gene Lyons

 

The story doesn't ring true to the police called to investigate.  A man lies dead in his bedroom, a gunshot to the head causing his death.  His wife, Mary Lee Orsini, says that she found the door locked and when she unlocked it and went in, found her husband dead.  She says that she and her eleven year old daughter had been in the house the night before and heard nothing and that she slept in her daughter's room as she was feeling ill. Once it becomes clear that this is not a suicide, she has lots of possible perpetrators for the police to investigate, including her brother.

Orsini is a master manipulator.  She is compelling and people are fascinated with her, even if her stories don't hold up.  She claims a college degree although she didn't finish high school.  She claims connections with prestigious people and insists that powerful criminals have it out for her.  Her attorney, Bill McArthur, isn't sure his client is innocent but he is sure the police don't have enough evidence to take the case to trial.  When a grand jury refuses to return an indictment, Orsini is set free and McArthur believes his job is done.

But it isn't.  Orsini attempts for months to pull him into her web of lies and fabrications.  She has several boyfriends during this time and uses them to further the plans and plots constantly spinning in her mind.  Things take a more deadly turn when McArthur's wife is found shot and dead in his house.  Orsini, who by now is upset that McArthur never took her up on her flirtations, does what she can to cast suspicion on him.  Before it's all over, a sheriff with political aspirations becomes part of Orsini's web and McArthur is hounded in and out of court for months.  

This case took place in Little Rock, Arkansas.  Readers will be as fascinated with Mary Lee Orsini and her manipulations as those caught up in the case were.  She is an example of a narcissistic sociopath and her need to be in the spotlight cost the lives of two innocent people.  This book is recommended for readers of true crime.

The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly

 

L.A. defense lawyer Mickey Haller is back in business.  After a case went terrible wrong, he has spent two years away from the law, part of that in a rehab center after becoming addicted to pain pills from an injury received on his last case.  Now he is ready to ease his way back into his former life.

But his plans to ease back in don't work out.  Haller is surprised to find out that far from having to look for clients, he has just been handed over thirty of them.  He had an agreement with another lawyer, Jerry Vincent. The two men served as backup for each other although they aren't close personally.  When Vincent is found murdered, all of his clients become Haller's.

The big case is a murder case about to start.  Walter Elliott is a famous and wealthy Hollywood executive, a movie producer with a string of successful movies.  Elliott has been charged with the murders of his wife and her lover at his beach mansion a few months earlier.  No murder weapon was found but Elliott found the bodies and called the police and there is gun powder residue on his hands.  He is charged and Vincent was his defense attorney.

Now Haller must get ready for a high stakes murder trial in a short turnaround.  Elliott is adamant that the trial go on as scheduled; he is determined to prove his innocence as quickly as possible and get back to his former life.  As Haller investigates the crime, he meets a police detective, Bosch, who is the officer in charge of Vincent's murder.  The two men form a partnership of sorts although they aren't very impressed with each other.  Haller is much more focused on the murder trial which starts to feel as if there is much going on behind the scenes that he isn't privy to.  Can he successfully try the case?

This is the second book in the Mickey Haller series.  Mickey is the son of a famous defense attorney, good at the law and not very good at relationships.  He has several ex-wives, a daughter he doesn't see as often as he'd like and few friendships.  The case has twists and turns and the ending is one that the reader won't see coming.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.

The Oxford Book Of American Short Stories, edited by Joyce Carol Oates

 

This large anthology (over 800 pages) brings together stories written by American authors from the earliest colonial times to the present.  Early authors include Washington Irving, William Austin, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Herman Melville and Samuel Clemens.  The most recently published authors include Junot Diaz, Jhumpa Lahiri, Pinckney Benedict, David Foster Wallace, Lorrie Moore, Ha Jin, Jeffrey Ford, Louise Erdrich, Amy Hempel, T.C. Boyle, Stephen King, Tim O'Brien, Tobias Wolff and Richard Ford.

As expected with such a wide range of decades, a diversity of opinions and topics are covered.  There are stories about being an immigrant, a story about the economic truths of various times, about families, about making a living and the role of family in a well-lived life, and other topics.  The stories include those that are surprising, those meant to rally readers to a specific point of view or a plan of action against some outrage and those meant merely to entertain.  There are many other authors between the early writers and the most recent one, authors whose names are familiar to readers everywhere.  Some of these include Henry James, Langston Hughes, William Faulkner, Donald Barthelme, and Kate Chopin.  

This anthology was edited by Joyce Carol Oates whose name is synonymous with quality writing and one of her stories is included in the anthology.  She has done a wonderful job of including stories with diverse viewpoints which are inclusive of the entire range of men and women who have written as Americans.  I am fairly well-read yet had read few of these stories and each discovery of another new gem was a delight.  This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.

Booksie's Shelves, April 24, 2021

 

Spring is here and with it hope of renewal.  My husband and I are both fully vaccinated and my daughter has her first appointment this week.  We're cautiously starting to socialize a bit.  We visited my son, fiancee and the grandkids for the first time in fifteen months last week then went on to a week at the beach.  It was good to get out and about a bit after being isolated for so many months.  I've still been doing a lot of reading and still reading mostly my own books as I work on downsizing my library.  But of course, some books are still being bought and sent to me by publishers.  Here's what's come through the door:

1. Broken, Jenny Lawson, humor, sent by publisher
2. The Barbarian Nurseries, Hector Tobar, literary fiction, purchased
3. Laurentian Divide, Sarah Stonich, literary fiction, purchased
4. Feral Creatures, Kira Jane Buxton, fantasy, sent by publisher
5. Fleishman Is In Trouble, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, literary fiction, purchased
6. Surviving Savannah, Patti Callahan, historical fiction, sent by publisher
7. Vera, Carol Edgarian, historical fiction, sent by publisher
8. Princes Of The Renaissance, Mary Hollingsworth, nonfiction, sent by publisher

Here's the ebooks I've purchased:

1. Witchmarked, Aaron Schneider, fantasy
2. The Birdwatcher, William Shaw, mystery
3. A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor, Hank Green, fantasy
4. Homesick For Another World, Ottessa Moshfegh, anthology
5. I Am, I Am, I Am, Maggie O'Farrell, memoir
6. The Other Americans, Laila Lalami, literary fiction
7. A Deadly Influence, Mike Omar, mystery
8. To Kill And Kill Again, John Coston, true crime
9. At The Edge Of The Haight, Katherine Seligman, literary fiction
10. The Story Of A New Name, Elena Ferrante, literary fiction
11. Lies Sleeping, Ben Aaronvitch, fantasy
12. The Last Anniversary, Liane Moriarty, thriller
13. The Invitation, Lucy Foley, thriller
14. Monster, Steve Johnson, true crime
15. Gods Of Howl Mountain, Taylor Brown, literary fiction
16. The Fifth Elephant, Terry Prachett, fantasy
17. The Dividing, Devin Downing, mystery
18. That Night, C.J. Grayson, mystery
19. Providence, Max Barry, science fiction
20. The Yellow House, Sarah Broom, memoir
21. A Single Swallow, Zhang Ling, literary fiction
22. The King Of Warsaw, Szczepan Twardoch, literary fiction
23. The Strange Journey Of Alice Pendelbury, Marc Levy, literary fiction
24. You, Me And The Colors Of Life, Noa Walker, literary fiction
25. Return To The Enchanted Island, Johary Ravalson, literary fiction
26. Butcher, Baker, Walter Gilmour, true crime
27. If We Were Villains, M.L. Rio, literary fiction
28. The Song Of The First Blade, T.C. Edge, fantasy

Here's what I'm reading:

1. The Wife Upstairs, Rachel Hawkins, mystery
2. Widow's Web, Gene Lyons, true crime
3. The Raven Boys, Maggie Stiefvater, fantasy
4. Trust Exercise, Susan Choi, literary fiction
5. Blood Orange, Harriet Tyce, thriller
6. The Brass Verdict, Michael Connelly, legal mystery

Happy Reading!

The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins

 

Jane is starting all over again.  Raised in the foster system, she was set loose on the world at eighteen with no help.  Since then she has drifted, working minimum wage jobs and moving from place to place.  This place is Birmingham, Alabama, and Jane is working as a dogwalker to rich people's dogs.  The dogs are fine but Jane is not as impressed with the people.  The women are smug and condescending to her and the men watch her with lustful eyes.  She is starting to think about moving on again when she meets Eddie.

Eddie and Trip are the ones the women love to gossip about.  Their wives were lost a year ago, presumed dead.  Eddie was married to Bea, the woman who created a multimillion dollar company selling style to Southern women and those who aspired to the Southern life.  Trip was married to her best friend, the two women having been friends since their school days.  One weekend the women went to Bea's lake house and out on the boat at night.  Something happened and they were never seen again.

Eddie Rochester is gorgeous, rich and charming, the kind of man who never notices plain Jane. But Eddie does notice her and before she knows it, is pursuing her.  Soon Jane has moved in and the women who snubbed her now cluster around her.  All is wonderful except for the questions Jane can't help but wonder about.  What really happened that night?  Were Eddie and Bea's marriage the fairy tale everyone thinks?  And what is that noise she keeps hearing?

I listened to this novel.  There were three narrators, one for Jane, one for Bea and one for Eddie.  Each of them added depth and interest to the story although I liked the Jane narrator the best and she was the one featured the most.  

This is a modern retelling of Jane Eyre and those who have read it will pick up lots of references to that wonderful novel.  But those who have never read it will enjoy this title as a modern day thriller with lots of twists and turns that redefine the story from page to page.  No one is exactly as they appear and some are very far from their public persona.  This book is recommended for thriller readers.

The Book Of Polly by Kathy Hepinstall

 

Willow Havens has one job in her ten year old life.  She has to protect her mother, Polly.   Polly, who fights with all the neighbors.  Polly who had Willow in her early fifties right after her father died.  Polly who loves to garden and hates the squirrels with a passion.  Somehow, Willow has to keep her alive.

Sure, Polly is embarrassing when she comes to school and tells the teachers what to do in no uncertain terms.  Willow has two older siblings but they are grown and gone so everything is up to Willow.  That job is harder because Polly won't talk about herself ever.  She won't talk about where she came from, who she knew there or why she left never to return.  

The job becomes overwhelming when Polly gets cancer or as she and Willow refer to it, the Bear.  Polly fights the Bear but chemo and surgery don't seem to be getting the job done.  So Willow reaches back into Polly's secret background and tries to get her a miracle cure.  The only catch is that Polly will have to go back home where she doesn't want to be and see a faith healer in whom she has no faith.

Kathy Hepinstall has written an engaging novel that explores the responsibilities an only child feels to keep their parents safe.  Although Willow isn't an only child, that is her experience as her siblings have gone on to adult lives leaving Willow alone with Polly.  Polly is a unique character but then again so is Willow.  This is a charming novel that will leave the reader laughing, crying and hoping for a miracle.  This book is recommended for readers of women's and literary fiction.

I Am I Am I Am by Maggie O'Farrell

 

In this memoir, novelist Maggie O'Farrell tells the story of times that she has faced death in her life.  She was never an easy child; always determined to have her own way and desperate to find a way out of her small town life.  She travels the world, often alone, and with that courage and determination to lead an adventurous life comes danger at times.

The book opens with O'Farrell's encounter with a man on a lonely path.  She was working in a hotel and had gone for a walk on her break.  She noticed the man at the start of her walk and nodded hello.  Then later, suddenly, there he was, standing in her path and denying her the ability to move forward.  He put a strap around her neck and his intent seemed clear but she was able to talk to him and get away.  Later another girl was killed in the same location and the same method.

This is one of the more dramatic episodes she has encountered but hardly the last.  She writes of almost being run over by cars, of being accosted in a robbery, of health issues that almost claimed a life.  She got a virus in childhood that left her paralyzed for months with doctors saying she would never walk again.  She had miscarriages that robbed her of longed for children.  Her daughter has the kind of allergies that can take her from her family in a moment if she is even exposed to food that was cooked in a pan or with utensils that were earlier used to cook food she is allergic to. 

From all these disasters, O'Farrell emerges determined to continue to live life on her own terms and unafraid although cognizant of life's dangers.  Her writing makes it clear that what she values most in life are her family, her husband and children.  She is compelled to write and the world is a better place for that.  I finished this book in awe of her determination and courage.  This book is recommended for readers of memoirs and those interested in authors and their lives.

The Mountains Sing by Que Mai Phan Nguyen

 This novel tells the story of a Vietnamese family across decades from the 1920's until the present.  It is shown through the prism of national events, from the time of the French occupation through the famine and time of starvation, through the civil war that torn the country apart for years and the land reform that tore people from their lands and sent them fleeing as refugees.

The main character is Tran Dieu Lan.  She is married with six children when her world falls apart.  Her husband goes off to fight the war.  She gives up her job as a teacher in order to become a trader of food and goods, an occupation frowned on by the government.  When land reform comes and each village is given a quota of land owners to execute, she manages to flee her village and take off with her children to walk the many miles to Hanoi.  On that trip, which takes months, she has to leave her children behind with various organizations and individuals that claim they will take care of each child.  She makes it to Hanoi and eventually manages to set up a household there with her youngest child and go back to reclaim her children.

The story picks up through the voice of her granddaughter, Hu'o'ng.  She is left with her grandmother when her parents, both doctors, are sent off to fight in the war. She sees the discord and bitterness her family is left with as various sides are chosen and brother fights brother.  Some of her relatives return, some never do.  Some come back unharmed physically while others are maimed or changed forever mentally.  

This is an intricate work written in lyrical language.  The author is a poet and that ability shines through in the narration.  She portrays the people and viewpoints succinctly while pointing out the loyalty that family should engender.  I listened to this book and the narrator was a welcome addition. The narration allowed me to hear the correct pronunciation of many of the words and names I would have mispronounced otherwise.  This book is recommended for historical fiction readers.  

Bones And Silence by Reginald Hill

 

When Inspector Andrew Dalziel witnesses a murder from his kitchen window of course the police believe him.  Except that the two men left in the room give a different story and it might have been an accident.  Except that Dalziel was drunk after a night out.  The victim was a woman; the wife of one of the men and the lover of the other.  

Dalziel's second in command, Peter Pascoe, has just returned from his time off after being seriously injured on the job.  He's not sure if Dalziel knows exactly what he saw but follows his lead investigating the case.  Plus he's been handed the job of investigating a series of anonymous letters that Dalziel has been receiving.  These are letters from someone, probably a woman, who states that she is planning to commit suicide and has picked Dalziel to tell because he won't bother to find her.

Add to this that Pascoe and his wife, Ellie, have been complicit in the choice of Dalziel to play God in the upcoming theatrics put on by the city and a mesmerizing director who convinces him to play the part.  Then bodies start showing up one by one and soon there's more work around than any force can be expected to cover successfully.

This is the eleventh book in the Dalziel/Pascoe series.  Fans of the series will delight in the interplay between the various police characters.  As always with Hill's novels, the plot is tight and the twists and turns surprising.  Dalziel is an easy character to write off but as always he proves that he sees more than anyone else and knows the criminal mind better than those around him.  Told with Hill's signature wit and humorous outlook, this book is recommended for readers of mystery novels.

The Scholar by Dervla McTiernan

 

Detective Cormac Reilly gets a call one night he should never have gotten.  His girlfriend, Emma, has come upon the body of a girl in a car park as she left the lab where she worked.  Cormac goes to the scene and is assigned the case although normally he would never be given the case due to his relationship to the witness.  There is no identification on the woman except for a lab access card.  That card belongs to Carline Darcy who also works at the lab.  In fact, Darcy is the granddaughter of the lab's founder and owner.

But it turns out that the woman is not Carline Darcy.   It is instead a woman who attended Galway University with Carline named Della.  According to Carline, she barely knew Della but Cormac believes there is more of a relationship than she is admitting to.  Della had a once in a generation brain and shockingly, for a poor girl from a poor family, an apartment full of cash.  As the investigation progresses, the case is taken from Cormac and given to another detective.  Against orders, he keeps up with what is going on and Emma's involvement gets deeper and deeper to the point where she moves from a witness to a suspect.  Will the relationship survive?

This is the second book in the Cormac Reilly series.  Cormac gave up his career as a lead detective in another city to follow his love, Emma, to Galway when she is offered the position at Darcy Laboratories that can make her career.  This police procedural is different as it explores not just the case but the relationship between Cormac and Emma, and whether a love can survive suspicion.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.

Killer Triggers by Joe Kenda

 

In this compilation of true crime stories, Joe Kenda relates tales from his long career in law enforcement.  Kenda was a homicide detective and commander of the major crimes unit in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  For each case, he starts with the trigger that he believes led to the murder then describes the case and how he and his team went about solving it.

Common triggers are money, sexual rage, mental disease, rage and revenge.  Some of the cases include a serial killer, a teenager who killed his mother while pretending to be a religious choirboy, and a grocery store murder.  He relates the tale of a man killed while drinking by one of his buddies for almost no benefit yet that case took years to solve.  He relates one of his first cases, a grocery store murder that shocked and saddened him. He talks of a housing complex full of gangs, drug dealers, prostitutes and their pimps where murder and robbery was a daily fact of life.  Throughout, his focus is catching the criminal and creating a case that would stand up in court.

I listened to this book and the narrator was Joe Kenda.  His dry wit and matter of fact narration was perfect for this book. As he relates each crime, the listener can feel how personally Kenda took each case and how determined he and his detectives were to solve the case. I can't imagine how anyone else could have done as good a job as Kenda himself does narrating the case.

Joe Kenda is known to most as the star of the TV series, Homicide Hunter, Lt. Joe Kenda on the Investigation Channel.  His team had a 92% solve rate which is almost unheard of in law enforcement.  After that show ended, his new show is airing on Discovery+ and is called American Detective.  Those readers interested in true crime will enjoy this book and how each crime is described along with how it was solved.  This book is recommended for readers of true crime.

The Signature Of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

 

Alma Whittaker is a lucky woman.  Born in 1800 to a wealthy father who worked his way from poverty to a thriving pharmaceutical and import/export business and to a Dutch mother who valued hard work and intelligence, Alma experienced a charmed childhood.  She was free to roam the large estate, studying whatever caught her fancy and was raised to interact with the finest minds from all over the world at the dinner table.  She grew to be a botanist of the first order herself.

But she also was an unlucky woman.  Standing over six feet tall and broad as a mountain, she possessed few if any womanly charms.  Her adopted sister Prudence was extremely beautiful which didn't help Alma's chances.  Alma yearned for love and marriage but found no men interested in her.  Finally in her fifties, she found a man who loved her but even though they married, the marriage lasted for only a short time.  These personal trials encouraged Alma to, in her later years, travel the world to find the answers that made sense to her.  She ended up developing the theory of evolution at around the same time that Darwin and Wallace did so, totally independent of their work.

This was an interesting novel and Alma a fascinating character.  She found succor and success in the life of the mind but endlessly longed for the human connection that would make her life complete.  The writing is descriptive and the reader can easily imagine themselves in the various locations. It is intriguing to learn about a woman who refuses to put her intelligence and curiosity in hiding and that accomplishes great intellectual tasks at a time when women were considered unable to do so.  This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.

Triptych by Karin Slaughter

 

When John Shelley was sixteen, all he could think about was getting his first kiss from his teenage crush.  He's thrilled when she agrees to come to his cousin's party and he can't believe his luck when he gets to take her home and they go to her bedroom.  But the thrill is gone when he wakes up.  All he remembers is passing out after doing some of the drugs his cousin gave him.  But he wakes up to the dead, mutilated body of the girl he was with.  John was arrested and due to the gruesome nature of the crime, he was tried as an adult and given a life sentence.

Now, twenty years later, John has been paroled.  He is doing the best he can to move on but it's not easy being a parole, especially one from a sex crime.  He works at a car wash at minimum wage and lives in a horrible rooming house for which he is overcharged.  His father wrote him off when he was arrested and his sister doesn't want to hear from him.  Even worse, someone has started killing women in the same way that the first murder occurred and John is pretty sure the police will be coming for him again.

The murders are the responsibility of the Atlanta Police Department.  The case is assigned to Michael but he is appalled when his boss calls in the state police for help.  They send an agent named Will Trent, a tall, gangly man who seems to know a lot but who doesn't follow the rules.  The two men also bring in Angie, a cop working Vice who knows the most recent victim.  She also has history with both men.  She worked with Michael in Vice but grew up as a friend of Will's.  Together the group tries to find the killer before he strikes again.  Will they be in time?

This is the first novel in the Will Trent series.  Will is a flawed character with significant learning disabilities that he has spent his life hiding and a background of horrific childhood abuse.  He and Angie can't live without each other or with each other; their relationship is a cauldron of churning emotions.  There are twists and turns, some expected and some coming out of nowhere to surprise the reader.  This book is recommended for readers of mystery novels.

The Dogs Of Winter by Ann Lambert

 It's winter in Montreal and that brings even more danger to the lives of the homeless.  When a young woman's body is found in a highway tunnel, the first thought was that she had been hit by a car and indeed that happened.  But she would have survived that accident if the person who found her had not been a murderer who then killed her by kneeling on her chest and suffocating her.  The woman had no identification but in her pockets are found two items that might help identify her.  One is a picture of her with a woman and the other is the business card of Detective Inspector Romeo Leduc.

Leduc doesn't know the woman and has no idea how she came to have his card.  He is busy with his own cases and this one is out of his jurisdiction.  But he soon comes to suspect that a killer is stalking the homeless, especially those with dogs, suffocating them and taking their animals.  He attempts to be involved in the case which spans several jurisdictions but he also has other things going on in his life.  His daughter is involved with a guy the detective doesn't like or trust.  His oldest friend wants him to help find his sister who disappeared several years before.  Most importantly, his romantic partner, Marie Russell, wants the couple to take the next step forward in their relationship and live together.  As the cases mount, can Leduc find the killer?

I listened to this novel, read by the author. Many think that authors are the worst readers of their work as the job requires specialized talents but I thought Lambert did an excellent job with the narration. It is evident that the areas she had written to be stressed were and her voice was a great one to listen to for extended times.

This is the second novel in the series.  Leduc and Russell are an interesting couple; she is 61,he is 51.  Russell is a college professor who used to be a marine biologist and is no shrinking violet.  She is determined that they will move forward but on her terms, in her house out in the rural country.  Although the couple seems to work, I found Marie to be demanding and ungiving in her expectations.  I liked Leduc much more but she provided him background to several issues that impacted his cases.  There were several alternate storylines going on in the novel such as sexual harassment/rape of a young woman in the workplace and a female entrepreneur who hides her crimes thinking it is for the greater good of female empowerment.  Overall, some of these miscellaneous threads could have been edited out to make a tighter story but I enjoyed the mystery.  This book is recommended for mystery and dog lovers.

All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

 This classic, published in1946, is a portrayal of political corruption, in this case that of Willie Stark, a rural lawyer who rose to become the governor of his Southern state.  Stark is modeled on Huey Long who had similar beginnings and political transcendency and the time period, that of the 1920s and 1930s is the same.  

But the real story is that of Jack Burden, a man who works for Stark.  Jack is a former journalist, a man who studies history.  He works as a fixer for Stark, a man who helps write the bills that Stark wants passed and then shepherds them through the legislature.  He works behind the scenes to eliminate potential issues and bend men to Stark's will.  

Burden grew up in wealth.  His childhood friends were the children of the governor at that time, who lived just down the street.  Ann was his first love and he assumed they would marry but once they both went off to college the romance seemed to die.  Burden's parent's divorced early in his childhood, his father disappearing and his mother caught up in a series of love affairs, the men getting younger and younger as she gets older.  Burden has a hard time finishing things.  He leaves the university without his degree when the thesis for his graduation led him to discover things about his ancestors he couldn't live with.  His own marriage lasts only a few years.  He spends his life learning that men can be easily bought and that the evil that they do will never disappear but remain hidden until someone comes along and unearths it.  It is a novel of betrayal and hard realizations.

This novel won the Pulitzer Prize.  It is an indictment of power and politics where the realization comes that decisions have consequences and that they will inevitably have to be paid.  It is a novel of hidden secrets and betrayals.  Jack learns that everything has a price and that you must be willing to pay the price for the decisions and deeds you do.  This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.  

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

 

Family secrets are uncovered in the wake of a family tragedy.  The Lees are a Chinese-American family living in a small Midwestern town in the 1970's.  Marilyn was determined in her youth to become a doctor but once she met and fell in love with James in college, she put those ambitions aside.  James was the Chinese man who grew up feeling constantly like an outsider, his classmates rich while his parents worked at the school which gave him free tuition.  He has never believed his luck in attracting and marrying Marilyn even though her mother disapproved of their mixed marriage and is not part of their lives.

Three children completed the family.  Nathan is the eldest, about to head off to Harvard where he wants to study physics.  Lydia is the elder daughter and the favorite child, channeling her parents' ambitions. Hannah is the youngest, often ignored and who spends her time studying the family dynamics, hoping for attention.  

But they all are hiding secrets.  Both Marilyn and James try to relive their lives through Lydia.  Marilyn is determined that Lydia will break the gender barriers she failed to and will make her way to the top by her intelligence.  James wants a popular daughter to make up for his friendless childhood.  Lydia models their ambitions although she isn't sure what she wants.  She spends endless hours studying and doing academic work.  She makes up a large circle of friends, pretending to be talking with them on the phone and making up gatherings she never attends.  Nathan has to hide his academic successes and aspirations since his parents only have time to focus on Lydia.  Hannah just hides on the periphery, hoping for attention that never comes.  Will this family find a way to break through the layers and find each other?

This debut novel was chosen as an Amazon Best Book of 2014.  Ng explores the themes of hidden family secrets and the damage they do as well as probing relationships between individuals from different races, the gender disparity in workplaces and the need for family members to love each other as they are and be supportive.  The characters have good intentions but just keep missing each other's humanity and needs.  This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction focused on family relationships.

Indelible by Karin Slaughter

 

Sara Linton stops by the police office to see her ex-husband, Police Chief Jeffrey Tolliver.  As she walks back to his office she greets the other officers working there, the secretary who has worked there as long as Sara can remember and a group of schoolchildren on a school trip.  Suddenly, two men walk in and without much speaking, open fire.  Two officers are killed immediately and another is hunted down and shot.  Jeffrey is also shot, a shoulder wound threatening to take his life.

Outside, Detective Lena Adams is reporting back to work after a few years away.  She was the victim in a horrific crime and had taken time off, working security at a nearby college.  When no one else believed in her, Jeffrey did and he is willing to give her a second chance.  Lena is determined to do whatever she can to help the situation.

As the hostages huddle inside, there is little clue as to what the gunmen want.  Sara's thoughts drift back to the beginning of her relationship with Jeffrey and the time early in their lives together when he took her to his hometown.  They were trying to decide if they were serious about each other and Jeffrey wanted her to see where he came from and to meet his childhood friends.  But they walked right into a murder involving those friends and the strain of discovering the truth almost ripped them apart.  Now Sara wonders if this will finish the job of separating them forever.

This is the fourth book in the Grant County series and in my opinion, the best one so far.  The reader sees the beginning of Sara and Jeffrey's relationship and learns their backstory.  Jeffrey becomes a much more rounded character with his background revealed and it is obvious what brings the two together and makes it impossible for them to live apart.  As the hostage situation evolves, dark secrets from the past emerge.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.

The Nothing Man by Catherine Ryan Howard

 

Eve Black had an encounter at age twelve only a few individuals will ever have.  A serial killer broke into the family home and killed her mother, father and younger sister.  Eve escaped as she had gone to the bathroom when the man broke in.  She actually saw him as she stood at the top of the stairs but he made no move to kill her also.  He left, leaving behind nothing but questions for Eve.  Who was he?  Why did he choose her family to victimize?  Why did he leave her alive and kill the rest of her family?  The police put the crime down to the man known as The Nothing Man who had been attacking other families.

Twenty years on, the man responsible has never been discovered.  Eve grows up to become a writer and her first book is the story of her life.  It is an instant hit and even supermarket security guard Jim Doyle is drawn to the book.  But Doyle has a reason no one else has; he is the Nothing Man and this book could bring the retribution he thought he would never have to face.

Eve's book says she will never stop until she finds out who The Nothing Man is.  Doyle is determined to prevent her success and the only way he knows how to do that is to revert to the killer he was all those years ago.  He plans to kill Eve.  Will he be successful?

Howard was born and raised in Ireland where the novel is set.  She has had lots of different jobs and has written several other highly successful suspense novels.  I listened to this novel and there were both a male and female narrator.  This dual narrator use mirrors the two opposing stories that play against each other in the novel to make it suspenseful.  This book is recommended for thriller readers.

Lost And Gone Forever by Alex Grecian

 

Inspector Walter Day has been missing for over a year.  Most have given him up for dead but his wife Claire and his best friend, former Sergeant Nevil Hammersmith, don't believe that.  They firmly believe that Walter is out there somewhere still alive.  They are right.

Walter was kidnapped by Jack the Ripper and has been held by him in an underground chamber and tortured.  Then one day Walter awakes and finds his prison cell open.  Unbelieving, he finally clambers out to find himself in a part of London that is unfamiliar.  But location is the least of Walter's problems.  Outside of his first name, he doesn't remember anything about the time before he was captured, not his name, his family, his friends or his job. 

The Ripper has a plan.  He was also captured and tortured; his captors a group of vigilantes made up of some of the most prominent men in society.  Once he escaped, he captured Walter and started his plan of wrecking revenge.  He slowly picks off his captors one by one.  His master plan is to use Walter to get close to the man he holds most responsible and to have Walter carry out the assassination.  Will he win?

This is the fifth novel in the Scotland Yard's Murder Squad series.  The police characters are quite likeable and the reader finds themselves caught up in their lives.  I really like this series and have read all the preceding novels.  This fifth one ties up lots of loose ends while leaving enough cliffhangers to make a further novel in the series possible.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.

Fifty Mice by Daniel Pyne

 

Imagine that you are whisked away from your life to enter the Witness Protection program.  No more house you've painstakingly decorated, no more job you understand and maybe even love, no more friends you've known for years.  That's Jay Johnson's situation but with one twist.  He's been brought in as a witness to a murder and he doesn't remember anything about it.

He is whisked off to a safe house on Catalina Island which sounds nice until you can't leave.  He is housed with a woman and her daughter to pretend that they are a happy family but the woman is definitely not happy about it.  The girl is mute, a legacy from the crime they are running from.  

As Jay tries to figure out what happened the night of the murder and if he truly witnessed it, life goes on.  He is given a mundane job renting videos.  He goes daily to see a psychiatrist who tries to uncover Jay's memory.  He plots how to escape and get back to his life.

Daniel Pyne is well known in Hollywood.  He is a screenwriter of such movies as The Manchurian Candidate, Fracture and Pacific Heights as well as working on tv series such as Miami Vice and Alcatraz.  This is his third novel.  His work in a visual medium is apparent as the scenes are written in such a way that the reader can imagine how they would translate to film.  But the reader may find themselves confused for much of the book as they try along with Jay to figure out what is going on which makes things difficult to follow.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.

The Ministry For The Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

 

This novel imagines solutions for the climate change that the author believes will stop life on Earth if not reversed.  It does so through two main characters.  Frank is a doctor working in India when an inversion creates a heat emergency that kills thousands; he survives but isn't sure why he does when so many around him do not.  Mary Murphy is the head of the Ministry For The Future, headquartered in Switzerland and charged with getting all the countries of Earth to work together to solve the climate crisis.

Over the years, these two characters intersect periodically.  Various methods of changing things are suggested; economic, individual saving, carbon credits and others.  These methods are enacted in the novel and over decades, we start to see first a standstill of the disaster then a reversal of the crisis.  These are sweeping changes; moving humans out of huge areas of land to let it go back to a native state and encouraging animals to breed, a worldwide currency based on carbon credits, massive governmental oversight of every aspect of life.  While the solutions suggested are far-ranging and hopeful in their effect, it is up to the reader to decide if they are realistic.

This is my first read of this author.  I found this novel to be somewhat of a slog with lots of preachy suggestions that I found unrealistic.  For one example, there is lightly thrown out that perhaps we need to have an optimum number of humans with the suggested range being two to four billion.  Since the world's population is currently almost eight billion, one is left to wonder who would be in charge of deciding which half of the population should be erased.  This book is recommended for readers of environmental science fiction.

Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots

 

Like many young women, Anna needs to have work to support herself.  Since she hasn't found a permanent career, she signs up with a temporary agency that specializes in supplying help to the villains that oppose superheroes and finds herself a low-level hench.  Even villains need help answering the phone, setting schedules, typing up notes, etc.  But her life changes the day her assignment is to accompany her employer, standing beside him as he gave a press conference so that there would be women in the crowd.

The biggest superhero in the world, Supercollider, breaks into the conference.  In his attempt to get to the villain, he creates havoc in the audience.  Anna is badly hurt but fares better than those who are killed by the falling debris.  After she gets out of the hospital and is recuperating, she gets laid off to add insult to injury.

While laid up, Anna starts to create a spreadsheet to stave off her boredom and pain.  She calculates the cost in both monetary terms and human pain and suffering that the antics of superheroes causes.  She is not surprised to find out that there is a cost but shocked at the enormity of it.  Soon she is obsessed with her project, researching all the heroes and the costs their antics cause.  

The biggest villain, Leviathan, hears about Anna's work and brings her on staff.  Now she has an entire division to help her with research and to devise ways to bring daily irritation to the heroes along with a plan to bring about their downfall by exposing the pain they bring along with their help.  She even finds herself becoming attached to Leviathan who is the scariest individual living.  When he is captured, Anna is in charge of rescuing him.  Can she do it and emerge unscathed?

This is a totally original, delightful read.  Anna is typical of young workers starting out and trying to find a way to make an impact.  Her skills and insight lead to her being able to break out of the ranks and rise to prominence in her organization.  It also probes the meaning of friendship.  Anna loses some friends along the way who can't handle what she does for a living.  She also makes new friends, one that she knows are willing to do anything to help her achieve her goals.  This book is recommended for fantasy readers.

House Of The Rising Sun by James Lee Burke

 

When we first meet Texas Ranger Hackberry Holland, he is in Mexico searching for his son, Ishmael.  Ishmael and his mother have lived a hard life, as a misunderstanding between Holland and Ishmael's mother, Ruby Dansen, left Ruby to raise their son on her own which wasn't easy in the years before World War I.  Holland was married to Maggie Bassett, a former madam and consort of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  Holland wasn't sure how he ended up married to her and had been trying to find his way out but Maggie wasn't having it.  She did everything she could to break up his relationship with Ruby and she won that battle.

While Holland doesn't find Ishmael on his trip to Mexico he does find something else.  In a cantina out in the desert, he encounters a madam called Beatrice DeMolay.  She tells him that along with the massacred soldiers he has found, there are guns stored waiting on an Austrian gun dealer.  Holland searches the guns and finds what appears to be a religious icon.  He takes that with him, blows up the guns to keep them out of enemy hands and heads back to Texas.

That trip sets in motion the events of Holland's life in the years ahead.  Maggie leaves and Hackberry is alone on his ranch.  He continues to try to find Ruby and Ishmael but the trail is cold.  When Ishmael goes to fight in World War I, he comes home wounded.  In the meantime, the arms dealer whose icon Hackberry took all those years ago has never forgotten it.  He still wants it back and finds a way to take control of Ishmael from the hospital he is sent to for his wounds.  Hackberry knows it will take every ounce of strength and cunning he possesses to get Ishmael back.  Can he do it?

This is the fourth novel in the Hackberry Holland series.  I like the Dave Robicheaux series better but this novel was intriguing and the action carried the reader along.  Hackberry never managed to see himself as others did; he only saw his faults while others saw all his virtues.  He is totally loyal to those he considers family and friends and while he is violent it is usually hard to avoid.  This book is recommended for readers of thrillers.

A Litter Of Bones by J D Kirk

 

The biggest case of DCI Jack Logan's career was his capture of serial killer "Mister Whisper" ten years ago.  Mister  Whisper targeted small boys and when he was captured, he confessed to the murder of three boys.  Logan was able to get him to confess where the bodies of two of them were hidden and return the bodies to their families but before he could get the information on the last boy, Mister Whisper was involved in an accident that left him in a mental hospital, uncommunicative.  Logan believes the man is faking his mental state and visits him periodically to try to get the location of the last boy's remains.

But now, another boy has been taken.  It's a hundred miles north of Glasgow where the earlier murders occurred but the case is so similar that Logan is sent north to head up the investigation.  Is this a copycat?  An admirer of Mister Whisper?  As the investigation turns up more and more similarities, rumors start to circulate that perhaps the man captured ten years ago wasn't the real Mister Whisper and that Logan may have gotten the wrong man.  Can he find the lost boy and find the killer before time runs out?

This is my first book by author J D Kirk but it won't be my last.  Logan is haunted by the past investigation and determined to do right by this new victim and those from the past.  His interaction with the new team is instructive as he picks out those detectives who show signs of promise and mentors them.  The writing has times of humor, reminiscent of other Scottish crime writers like Stuart MacBride.  This book is recommended for mystery readers and especially fans of police procedurals and Scottish noir.

I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes

 

Two men from two very different worlds, pitted against each other in a race against time.  The Saracen is a radicalized Muslim.  His father was beheaded for daring to speak out against the government.  His son vows to take down that government and believes the best way to do so is to cripple the United States which supports his government overseas.  His plan is to become a doctor and then to manipulate the smallpox gene so that it can be introduced into the population with a one hundred percent fatality rate.

Fighting against him is the best man the CIA ever had in the field.  He has retired while still a young man but is brought back in to fight and defeat the man who has hatched this plan.  His name does not matter as he changes identities as often and easily as other men change their shirts.  He goes undercover to Turkey where a call between the Saracen and a woman has been intercepted to locate and stop him.  His cover is as an FBI agent who has come to investigate the death of a young tech billionaire.  While solving that case, he discovers that Saracen has moved further ahead with his plan than anyone had suspected.  Can he uncover the plot and find Saracen in time to avoid the thousands or millions of deaths his plot can kill?

Terry Hayes is a screenwriter and his work on framing stories in a taut visual manner pays off in this thriller.  Told from the alternating views of the Saracen and the man sent to thwart his plan, the reader is fascinated with the life stories and maneuvers of each man.  All the characters are finely drawn, even those in lesser supporting roles.  The action is suspenseful and perhaps timely in this time of pandemic.  This book is recommended for thriller readers.

We Begin At The End by Chris Whitaker

 

In a small California town, a tragedy has long consequences.  A young boy, Vincent King, has a car accident and a local girl, Sissy Radley, is killed.  He gets a harsh judge who sentences him to ten years in prison and when a prisoner picks a fight with him, Vincent's sentence gets extended to 30 years due to the other man's death after the fight.  Now it's time for Vincent to come home.

There are many in the town who remember the accident as if it were yesterday.  The chief of police, Chief Walker, was Vincent's best friend and has never forgiven himself for testifying against him at the trial.  Star Radley was Sissy's sister.  Her life after Sissy's death was a spiral downward.  Now she has two children she can't take care of, Duchess and Robin.  Star moves from man to man, often abusive men.  She drinks and drugs and often there isn't enough food for the children.  Duchess who is thirteen, tries to take up the slack and give Robin a happy childhood.  She does the best she can but after all is only thirteen and can only do so much.  

When Vincent comes home, new events are put in play.  The children end up living with their grandfather who slowly works his way into their hearts and is a stable influence.  Walker tries his best to help Vincent integrate back into society but it's a hard road and Vincent doesn't seem that interested.  Soon he is once again suspected of a crime and now Walker must put aside his own feelings and investigate to get to the truth. 

This book has gotten a lot of positive press.  It is an Amazon Best Book of March 2021 and a number one Indie Pick.  The characters are finely drawn and the book explores the themes of family and what that means, of friends and loyalty and keeping promises even when they are hard.  The locale is California and Montana but the novel has a Southern feel to me.  This book is recommended for readers of crime novels with a literary overlay.  

I listened to this novel.  The narrator, George Newbern, does an admirable job.  He has a mellow voice that tells the story as if he were telling it on a front porch at dusk, rocking in a porch swing.  I would definitely listen to another of his performances.

Wolf To The Slaughter by Ruth Rendell

 

Two events occur in a small English town that seem to be related.  A bloody room has been reported by the owner; the man he rented it to nowhere to be found.  At the same time an heiress, the sister of an up and coming artist, has disappeared.  Has a murder occurred?  The woman seems to have tons of men in her life and it's not outside the realm of possibility that she has taken up with a bad one.  

Chief Inspector Wexford, Inspector Burden and Constable Drayton look into the disappearance.  There seems to be mystery surrounding a lighter which may or may not be connected to the case.  Drayton finds himself drawn to a witness and is soon dating her under the radar as he knows it is not allowable.  Her testimony if ever required could be brought into question if their relationship becomes known.  Wexford and Burden are more focused on the missing woman.  Her brother doesn't seem to be able to account for her whereabouts and isn't even sure if he should be worried.  But that room and all the blood...

This is an early Rendell novel, the third in the Wexford series.  He is still fairly undefined in this book although easily the dominant character in the police station.  Burden is judgmental as always but his skills complement those of Wexford.  Drayton is just starting out and has a plan to become like Wexford who he admires and wants to follow.  The mystery twists and turns and has an interesting ending.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.