O Jerusalem

Author Laurie R. King sends Holmes and Russell to British controlled Palestine to work on a case for Mycroft.  During their sojurn they masquerade as an Arab man and boy traveling with two others through the countryside.  Their costumes bring them into some unusual situations as Russell proves to their two guides her ability with a knife and her willingness to kill if necessary.  The four of them uncover a plot to destroy British rule and of course triumph.  An exciting story.

The Klondike!

Having once visited Dawson City in the Yukon, I decided this book Gold Diggers: Striking It Rich in the Klondike would be an interesting read.  Author Charlotte Gray takes a look at the gold rush and its relationship to the development and decline of Dawson City through the stories of six different individuals.  We witness the tale through the eyes of writer Jack London, miner Bill Haskell, businesswoman Belinda Mulrooney, journalist Flora Shaw, mountie Sam Steele, and priest Fr. William Judge.  This was a fascinating account of the free-wheeling and often amazing story of the gold rush from the travels on the Chilcoot Pass tthrough the earliest gold strikes, the tent cities, and freezing conditions and starvation, to the eventual commercialization of the gold industry.  Gray writes a worthwhile tale.  It makes me want to go back to the Yukon to see the area through better informed eyes.

You've heard about it, now read it!

I have heard endlessly about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, and I bought it a year ago.  But it took me until last week to get around to reading it.  I hated putting it down!  It is worth reading. 

Disgraced financial investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist is hired to research the decades old disappearance of 16 year old Harriet Vanger.  In turn, he hires the unorthodox Lisbeth Salander as his assistant.  Along the way, they discover the shady dealings of Hans-Erik Wennerström the financier who sent Blomkvist into his exile. 

Now that we have the facts of the story out of the way, I want to say that there is much suspense, horrific crime, computer hacking, and romance.  I cannot do the book justice.  Just read it.

Body Work

This latest work by Sara Paretsky featuring her detective, V. I. Warshawski, begins in the trendy Club Gouge.  Performance artist Karen Buckley, The Body Artist, allows bar patrons to paint on her naked body, at the club.  Warshawski attends a performance and witnesses the venom of one of the young club goers (Chad) toward Nadia, a woman who paints on the Artist.  At a later performance, Nadia is shot and Warshawski gets involved; hired to prove that Chad is not guilty of killing this woman he has had differences with.  The Body Artist, the bar owner, and all involved in the club are extremely uncooperative with the investigation, which leads to the disappearance of the Artist and the involvement of Ukranian thugs.  This latest offering in the V. I. Warshawski series is worth reading.

Face-blind!

You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know by Heather Sellers is the story of one woman's quest to understand a little known disability.  Sellers has prosopagnosia, or face-blindness, something that she only recently realized she suffered.  All her life she has had trouble recognizing people, but did not know that this was abnormal.  In her quest for knowledge about face-blindness, she explores her childhood to determine if her mentally-ill mother or her alcoholic father could be the source of her own problems. 

I found myself racing through the book to learn more about her childhood as well as her present day mistakes in introducing herself to long-known acquaintances.  Once she ran up and kissed the wrong man in the airport thinking it was her boyfriend. 

The book can seem disjointed at times, but is still an enjoyable and quick read worth considering for your own reading lists.

Books books books

Now that school is in session again, it is harder to get around to blogging about my reading. 

Here is what I read - as far as I can remember

The Lies of Fair Ladies - Jonathan Gash - Lovejoy book - loved it.
The Moor - Laurie R. King - a Sherlock Holmes, Mary Russell book - I listened to it and loved it.
Deep Shadow - Randy Wayne White - A Doc Ford mystery - probably his best yet.

If I think of anything else, I will write again.

A Real Slog through a Lovejoy Mystery

The Great California Game by Jonathan Gash was quite a slog.  This one takes place in the US, but the slang was so weird that you would never recognize it as anything American.  Lovejoy gets himself involved in some sort of country-wide gambling scheme aimed at control of the major markets of America.  You can tell from that last sentence that I never quite figured out what was going on.  Give this one a miss. 

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

Eleven-year-old Flavia finds a dying man in the family's cucumber patch.  She makes solving his murder - and his identity - her task.  Full of fun and quirky humor.

Alan Bradley's The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie was enjoyable to listen to.  I think it would make a great kid's movie.  I am not so sure about the appeal to adults.  I do not think I would have been able to enjoy this if I read it, but listening to it was fun.  The reader - Jayne Entwistle - did a great job of Flavia de Luce's voice.  She really sounded like a young genius.

A visit to Echo Park

The Madonnas of Echo Park by Brando Skyhorse is a fascinating look at the interlocking lives of an unlikely group of Mexican Americans in the Los Angeles area.  When Skyhorse was in the sixth grade, he insulted a classmate at a dance party by refusing to dance with her because she was a Mexican.  Later, Skyhorse learned that he, too, was a Mexican American.  He has been troubled by his behavior ever since and has speculated on the life Aurora Esperanza would have had after his beastly behavior.  This book is his tribute to his classmate.  I recommend spending some time with the inhabitants of Echo Park and taking a peek at their lives.

Dragongirl

Ever since Todd McCaffrey took over the writing of his mother's famous Dragonriders of Pern series, the books have gotten weaker and weaker.  This book seems to be more about multiple sexual relationships than about dragons and fighting thread.  I think Todd is planning to take the series more into the realm of people and how they interact and less into their relationships with their dragons.

In this book, young Fiona, queen rider, becomes the head of Telgar Weyr, at a time when the dragon numbers are at their lowest and the threat of thread at the highest.  It is up to her and her fellow weyrleaders to determine how they will manage to increase the dragon numbers in time to save the planet.  I think it is obvious that they will go back or forward into time to mature their young population to fighting age in the next book. 

I can't help it, I keep reading them even though they fail to satisfy.

Louisiana at its murderous best!

James Lee Burke is a superb writer of mystery set in his home state of Louisiana.  One really gets a flavor of the state.  In the newest entry, The Glass Rainbow, Burke's detective, Dave Robicheaux gets involved in investigating a series of murders of young women.  Of course, these murders are outside his jurisdiction and using his friend Clete Purcell to help him, is not working by the book. 

I got lost when he began to investigate the wealthy man his daughter was dating.  I probably just read too fast.  The book is a good one, maybe not the best in the Robicheaux series, but still a worthwhile entry.

A Monstrous Regiment of Women - Laurie R. King

I just realized that I had omitted writing anything about this book.  I finished listening to it several weeks ago.  The book involves a charismatic woman preacher who has drawn a large following of wealthy women.  Why have so many of these women died?  Is the minister to blame?  It certainly looks as though she would be guilty.  This book was a good entry in the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series and I recommend it highly.  One caveat, the series should be read in order.

Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes

I'm still listening to the series of Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes mysteries by Laurie R. King that I read already.  I just finished A Letter of Mary in which Dorothy Ruskin, an archaeologist, presents to Mary a parchment she has discovered which appears to be from the hand of Mary Magdalene.  While Russell is studying the letter, she and Holmes discover that Ruskin has been found dead.  Determining that she was murdered, they then begin to seek clues regarding the murderer. 

A Letter of Mary is fairly interesting in its study of early documents and the implications such a document as a letter from Mary Magdalene would have on society.  I did not find the conclusion of the mystery that satisfying.  Perhaps I missed a clue or two.  This would not surprise me as sometimes when I listen to a book, my attention wanders.

The Best Detective Books Anywhere!

I believe that Bill Pronzini is the best author of detective books anywhere.  His latest, Betrayers, does not disappoint.  Tamara is off sleuthing on her own case, Bill has a case that sounds like it will be a waste of time, and Jake is working a skip trace.  No major cases this time, but the same taut writing and ever-evolving characters.  Added to this book is a side story concerning Bill and Kerry's thirteen-year-old daughter who has found and brought home a box with cocaine inside.  Where did this come from and why does she have it?  Bill will figure this out as well. 


I recommend all of the books by Pronzini, especially his "Nameless Detective" series.  I would recommend you read an earlier book first so that you can get a better idea of who each character is, especially since Tamara and Jake are not in the earlier books. 

Caper!

Parnell Hall, the writer of both the Puzzle Lady and the Stanley Hastings series of mysteries, has released his latest in the Hastings series: Caper.   Stanley is a private detective whose only detecting ability is in his expertise with trip and fall cases in his work for an ambulance chasing, sleazeball lawyer.  In this newest book, Hastings is approached by a young woman looking to have him track down the movements of her teenage daughter, who she says is working after school as a prostitute.  She tells him that she wants her daughter followed and brought safely out of her situation.  What Hastings does not know, is that the "mother" is not the mother of the girl in question, and when the daughter's supposed John is found dead, who looks the guiltiest?  Stanley Hastings himself.  The bumbling private eye then spends his time working out how to clear his name without revealing his close involvement. 

I used to read these and thought it might be fun to read a new one.  But now I find that the detective's bumbling ways just annoy me.  Perhaps I have read one Stanley Hastings/Parnell Hall too many.

Isabel Allende's Latest Book

I finally read a book by Isabel Allende, Island Beneath the Sea.  It had marvelous reviews in all the sources I saw, so I thought I would give her a try.  The book was quite long and at times seemed to drag, but I would still recommend this story about Zarité, a slave woman on the island of Saint-Domingue.  Zarité is bought by a sugar cane plantation owner, Valmorain, to care for his house and family. 

The story follows Zarité as she becomes further intertwined in the lives of the Valmorain family.  Following the major slave rebellion on the island (and the subsequent renaming of the island to Haiti,) the family relocates to French owned New Orleans.  It is there that Zarité wins her freedom, but conditions continue to throw the fates of her family and the Valmorain's together. 

The conditions on the plantation are brutal and ugly; the mix of voodoo and Christian religion in the lives of the slaves fascinating.  Since I am not doing justice to the scope of this book, I can only ask you to please consider adding this book to your "to read" pile.

Girl in Translation

Jean Kwok's Girl in Translation is the story of eleven-year-old Kim Chang and her mother, who emigrate from Hong Kong to the United States hoping for a better life.  When they arrive, they find themselves indebted to Aunt Paula who is charging them for their air fare and controlling where they live by putting them in an unheated, broken windowed, unfurnished apartment and collecting their rent money besides.  The only work they can get is also controlled by Aunt Paula - backbreaking labor in her sweatshop in Chinatown.  Kim attends the local school and works to excel but finds it difficult, since she, too, must work in the factory. 

The sweatshop scenes are heartbreaking as Kim is not the youngest worker; many other children must work there to help their parents.  Despite her age, Kim assumes adult responsibilities - even filling out her mother's tax forms.  This is an interesting and worthwhile read about the tensions of being between two worlds.  The story rings true.  I recommend it highly.

"I need you to understand how ordinary it all was."

The year is 1963 and the place is small town Mississippi.  Eleven-year-old Florence Irene Forrest has an anything but ordinary life as the daughter of a mentally unstable mother and a father with dark secrets.  The first we realize that her father's night meetings are anything but benign occurs when immediately after he leaves, Florence's mother takes her on a trip to the bootlegger - not the white bootlegger, but the black bootlegger - and gives this man a warning to "get everybody inside, and the boys in the woods."

As Florence becomes more aware of the conditions of her life, the story grows ever darker.  The book is a look back at her life from the viewpoint of her adult life, and her dawning recognition of what she witnessed that year.  The Queen of Palmyra by Minrose Gwin reminded me of The Help but with a much harsher view of race relations in that violent time. 

The Very Last Gambado by Jonathan Gash

Antiques and women, being passion, are the only living things you can depend on.  Trouble is, they come with this other stuff called crime.    --Lovejoy

Thus begins the latest read in my quest to re-read all the Lovejoy books until I reach the ones I have not yet read. 

In this novel, a movie crew has come to town to film a story about the robbing of the British Museum and hired Lovejoy to be its antiques expert.  What's the problem?  Well, the museum has never been robbed and all possible plots can be foiled.  Can Lovejoy come up with a plan?  And why do they need him anyway?  Could this be the first successful robbery of the beloved institution, the "very last gambado?"  Join Lovejoy on his first adventure with Hollywood.

Rereading Laurie R. King

I have decided to reread Laurie R. King's Sherlock Holmes/Mary Russell books - but I am cheating!  I am listening to the books.  I just finished her first Holmes/Russell book - The Beekeeper's Apprentice. I recommend it highly.  Mary Russell is a teenager when she first meets her neighbor Sherlock Holmes.  When the two of them match wits, Holmes finds that this young woman is his intellectual match.  He soon begins teaching her the tricks of his trade and the two work together to solve their first case: who is trying to kill them and why?  I never read any of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes books, yet I find this series to be a wonderful read.  You might also like to read The God of the Hive reviewed previously.