Mornings have been cold here, 32 degrees when I get up. I know my sister still has to walk her dog, but she and I haven’t been going for long walks in the parks. Instead, I’ve been tucked in at home, reading for deadline for Library Journal. We did go to see the new Meg Ryan movie, “What Happens Later”. We both agreed it certainly isn’t a rom-com, as it’s advertised. It isn’t a romance or a comedy. It was so-so.
Because deadline is Friday, I’m actually between books for the blog, as Mark would say. Next one up is one I bought because I love Claire Keegan’s writing. Tuesday was release day for So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men. It’s three short stories, and I think they’ve all been published one place or another before. I just haven’t read them. It won’t take long to get through 119 pages, but Keegan’s books are always meaty and thought-provoking.
“Celebrated for her powerful short fiction, considered “among the form’s most masterful practitioners” (New York Times), Claire Keegan now gifts us three exquisite stories, newly revised and expanded, together forming a brilliant examination of gender dynamics and an arc from Keegan’s earliest to her most recent work.
“Each story probes the dynamics that corrupt what could be between women and men: a lack of generosity, the weight of expectation, the looming threat of violence. Potent, charged, and breathtakingly insightful, these three essential tales will linger with readers long after the book is closed.”
What about you? What have you been doing this week? What are you reading?
Another busy week for me. I mentioned going to the theater again last Friday. On Saturday there was an almost all-day family birthday party for both of my grandkids, which was a blast. A highlight was teaching my niece from Nashville the game Rummikub. .She became addicted, especially when she won a game. More games and fun on Sunday. Every day this week to date I’ve had a card game, and tomorrow I have a doctor’s appointment and my usual Toastmasters meeting. Needless to say, my reading rate is not up to par. But I did finish two books this week.
Laurie R. King’s long-running Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes historical mystery series continues with THE LANTERN’S DANCE, book #18. It hasn’t been too long since Sherlock discovered he had fathered a son with the now-deceased Irene Adler. Damian Adler is an avant-garde artist and widower with a young daughter and a fiancee who is a physician. As he has invited Sherlock and his much younger wife to visit them in France, Sherlock is dismayed to discover that Damian and his family have left suddenly for another part of France in response to mysterious strangers asking about him in a town near his home and an actual break-in by a knife-wielding trespasser. Sherlock leaves to find and assist Damian while the temporarily injured Mary stays behind to see if she can break the troublesome code used in a journal seemingly authored by a precocious young girl many decades ago. The mystery involves the Vernet family of famous artists, one of whom is a forebear of Sherlock’s. What I appreciate about this series entry are the tightly-plotted mystery, the attention to detail that immerses the reader in the sights and smells of every venue in which the story takes place, and especially the story of an engaging, precocious young girl taken away from her mother to spend many years of her life with her uncle in India. As Mary decodes the journal, we are treated to more and more about the girl’s life and who she really turns out to be. It is also helpful that the author gives us enough information from previous series entries to better understand the current book’s plot. The author’s writing style is as compelling and interesting as ever, so I look forward to more about Sherlock and Mary in the near future. (February)
In Ashley Schumacher’s latest YA romance, IN THE ORBIT OF YOU, Nova and Sam are the closest of friends in their early childhood. Nova sees the scars Sam tries to hide but never talks about, but she doesn’t fully understand when he moves away to live with his aunt and uncle. Sam promises to find her in the future, but since Nova’s single mother moves them frequently for her career, a reunion is unlikely. Nevertheless, a reunion of sorts does happen when the two are in high school. They are inevitably drawn to each other once again, but both have issues that combine to prevent them from acting on their spark. Sam is a star football player with a devoted girlfriend but would rather build furniture than accept a football scholarship. And the many changes in Nova’s life have left her painfully adrift, still wondering who she is and what she wants out of life. This is a quiet, serious story for the most part, with an in-depth look at two young people who, although an online quiz scored their potential relationship at 99%, may need to go their separate ways to achieve their goals. I enjoyed the character growth they demonstrated, and I was engaged by Sam’s adopted parents and Nova’s mother. The ending wasn’t exactly what I expected, but a welcome epilogue brought the book to a satisfying conclusion. Another YA book of the author’s that I particularly enjoyed is The Renaissance of Gwen Hathaway. (March)
That’s a series that I could never bring myself to start, Margie, no matter how much others praised Laurie R. King’s work. I couldn’t accept that Sherlock Holmes married a much younger wife. The premise just doesn’t work for me.
Isn’t family time wonderful? You’ve been enjoying it longer than I have, but I’m appreciating the time together.
Thanks for The Lantern Dance review Margie. I’m a fan of Laurie R King’s books. All the interesting information she manages to include in the stories and her attention to detail.
LOVED The Lantern’s Dance. Laurie King’s writing always leaves me feeling satisfied.
I haven’t had much time to read this week. I’ve been running errands, my mom had a doctor appointment, and my boyfriend who hasn’t been feeling right for a while finally went to the doctor. They found out he had a rare reaction to the blood pressure medication he was on. They switched his medication and referred him to a cardiologist who he sees on Monday. Hopefully everything will clear up as the medication gets out of his system.
I did manage to finish THE TWELVE BOOKS OF CHRISTMAS by Kate Carlisle and I enjoyed it. Brooklyn, Derek and her parents travel to Scotland for a wedding. Of course they discover a body. Brooklyn seemed more like herself than she has in the past several books.
Yes! I totally agree with you, Sandy. Brooklyn seems more like herself in this one.
I hope the new medication works for your boyfriend so he feels more like himself.
Good morning. I know what you mean about the weather. I like Fall, and November (Thanksgiving and my birthday) in particular, but it’s been colder than normal this week. It’s supposed to be warmer than normal the next few days, though, so we’ll get out and enjoy it, even if it’s just walking to the Avenue for lunch.
Thanks for mentioning the Keegan. I put it on hold. I have the new Michael Connelly (Haller and Bosch) and Val McDermid (Karen Pirie) books on the way to the library.
Jackie liked the first (vampire) book in Heather Graham’s spinoff Blackbird trilogy, but she was very disappointed in the second, SECRETS IN THE DARK. Jack the Ripper is the theme here, and she repeatedly complained to me that there were huge info dumps of exposition about the Ripper, his victims, etc. It was as if Graham or her researcher did a LOT of research on Jack the Ripper and she wanted to get ALL of it into the book, but instead of integrating it into the story, she just poured it out on the pages in huge chunks. Then there was the ‘Had I But Known’ where the heroine goes off on her own without backup to confront the killer. She’s hoping book three (back to vampires) is better. She is reading a Lora Leigh book now.
I did read and very much enjoy Edward D. Hoch’s THE KILLER EVERYONE KNEW, his collection of police procedural stories about Captain Leopold. Now reading Charles Beaumont’s THE CARNIVAL and Other Stories. Beaumont is best known for his contributions to the classic The Twilight Zone, and some of these stories were adapted for that series.
As mentioned last time, I liked Ann Patchett’s non fiction books (particularly THIS IS THE STORY OF A HAPPY MARRIAGE) very much, but I’d never read her fiction. TOM LAKE appealed to me, and I liked it a lot. When she is sixteen, Laura changes her name to Lara (she loves DOCTOR ZHIVAGO) and successfully auditions for the starring role of Emily in the school production of OUR TOWN. She later plays it in college and then, at 22, gets to star in a summer stock production in northern Michigan. All this is told from the present during the pandemic to her three daughters as they collect the fruit in their cherry orchard (yes, of course Chekhov is evoked) in Michigan. Patchett knows how to tell a story and involve the reader. Good book. I understand Meryl Streep did the audiobook.
I’ve been looking forward to Paula Munier’s new Mercy Carr book ever since she and Troy got married at the end of the last one, and now HOME AT NIGHT is here. This Vermont series is my favorite K-9 series. In this Halloween-themed book, the supposedly haunted Grackle Tree Farm is up for sale, and Mercy wants it for her and Troy and their dogs. But, of course, while going through it with the realtor, Mercy and Elvis (her Belgian Malinois) discover a dead body in a locked upstairs room. All the regular characters are here and I am looking forward to reading the rest of it quickly.
Note to Rosemary: We watched THE VICTIM and have started PAYBACK and MUM (two very different roles for Peter Mullan!), and last night series two of Irvine Welsh’s CRIME popped up, so that will be next after PAYBACK.
Have a good week everybody. One week until my favorite holiday, Thanksgiving, and eight days until my birthday (a big number which I won’t share).
Jeff, I only saw your comment after I’d posted mine. Happy Birthday when it comes! Mine is in fact in 3 days time, and I too will not share the number. They don’t get any smaller, do they? Though a friend of mine said, quite rightly, that we should just be glad we’re still here.
I think I’ve seen both series of Irvine Welsh’s CRIME, I need to check. I enjoyed what I saw anyway.
And I’m totally with Jackie on being annoyed by information dumps. Why can’t authors see how boring they are? I stopped reading another writers books when she bombarded me with Aberdonian history (in a thriller) and transgender information. I have no problem whatsoever with local history (I have several books on it) or trans characters (I loved Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl and also Nevada), but this was like a lecture, being given by a character who simply would not have come out with all of that, especially in the form she did it – long and tedious monologues. There is so little editing sometimes.
We’re expecting temperatures to reach the mid-sixties today, Jeff, so it should be nice.
Tell Jackie I didn’t even bother picking up the second book in the Blackbird trilogy because I had issues with the first book. When I saw “Jack the Ripper” mentioned for this one, I thought nope. Why bother?
My friend, Donna, said Meryl Streep was perfect to read Tom Lake. She loved it.
Enjoy Home at Night!
Good morning Lesa and everyone,
Thanks for the heads up on the new Claire Keegan Lesa, I love her writing.
This week I finished Aingeala Flannery’s THE AMUSEMENTS, set in Tramore, County Waterford.
I enjoyed it very much – it introduces various fictitious characters living in or connected to this (real) run down seaside town, all of them having some sort of a connection to Helen, who longs to escape Tramore the minute she leaves school and go to art college – a concept totally alien to her working class parents – and/or to Stella, an enigmatic girl from the smarter side of town, who turns up in Helen’s class. Helen falls passionately in love with Stella, and for a while they spend most of their time together, dreaming of their great escape. But Stella is fickle and self-centered, and when she lets Helen take the blame for something she did not do, Stella’s awful mother Nancy uses terrible trouble for Helen that results in her losing the job she had taken to save up for her future.
All of the characters in this short book are interesting and believable, from Muriel Power, who runs the guest house just as her mother did before her – and harbours strong opinions about some of her guests, one of whom she takes against so much that she serves him bacon ‘on the turn’ and refuses to make him toast,- to Ted Burke, the quiet butcher who would like to get to know Nancy’s ‘alternative’ new neighbour Vonnie much better, and Tipp Phelan, who’s developed a guilty obsession with Stella because his own wife is bogged down in childcare.
Flannery gets life in a small Irish town to a T. This is not a cosy story about country life, but one about how it really is in a dead end seaside resort. Despite that, much of the book is very funny, and the characters speak exactly as Irish people do speak. I hope Flannery, a journalist for whom this is a first book, writes more.
I’m now reading Sue Perkins’ EAST OF CROYDON. Sue was one of the original presenters on The Great British Bake Off (she left, along with Mary Berry and Mel Giedroyc, when the BBC sold the show to Channel 4.) She’s already written one memoir, SPECTACLES, which I have a copy of but have not yet read. This one is about her travels in Vietnam, Tibet, etc when she was making a TV documentary about the Mekong River.
Perkins is not a ‘glossy’ travel writer – she happily admits to being a terrible traveller, and she also tells it like it is – the awful conditions, the poverty of many of the people she meets, the dreadful conditions in which most of them live. And she is quick to dispel the notion that these people are ‘poor but happy’ – they’re not, they all want to be affluent Westerners like her.
One of the families she visits lives in a house on stilts above the river. During the monsoons, the river rises and literally flows through their home, so they simply move to an upper floor – but climate change means that the river now rises much higher, and soon they will have only the roof to which to retreat. The river may look beautiful, Perkins says, but it is actually massively polluted. The residents have no choice but to use it for everything – it’s their bath, their toilet, their sink for washing vegetables. The water is so acidic that all of their toenails are eroded.
But Perkins is fundamentally a comedian (she first worked with Mel G as a comedy act, the two having met at university) and without belittling the plight of these people, she sees the humour in her own situation – her ineptness when asked to join in with their work, her inability to cope with all the bugs and snakes, her horror at being offered drink from a bottle that a head tribesman has just spat into….
And she also includes plenty of anecdotes about her own family, her teenage years and her time at Cambridge (‘10% Renaissance Literature, 10% Greek tragedy, 40% gossip, 35% scones, 5% marijuana’). Her writing style is very accessible and easy to read. I’m enjoying it very much.
We’ve had some terribly wet days here but also some beautiful, crisp, clear sunny ones. I walked up to the sheep farm, where I hadn’t been for a while, and discovered that whole areas of woodland had been cleared. I suppose a lot of the trees had suffered storm damage, but it still seemed sad. The area is now up for sale but as woodland only, so I presume a purchaser would restock it. Often woods are not properly cared for, the trees are not thinned, there is little wildlife; they feel quite dead. But I think there are huge subsidies for planting trees, so someone will no doubt be interested.
I’ve noticed many more birds in my garden this week – including a woodpecker, lots of great tits and blue tits, a regular blackbird and various crows and wood pigeons. I suppose they are hungrier in cold weather, and I’ve certainly been topping up their food much more frequently.
Today I went up to our village hall to collect two tags from the ‘giving tree’ – each one has the name and age of a child on it, and you buy an appropriate Christmas gift then return it to the charity. These are distributed by either the charity or the social services, I’m not sure which.
The children are nominated as being those unlikely to receive anything else. I find it so sad that in a relatively wealthy first world country, children are still living in poverty – and the numbers are increasing all the time. Many people are having to turn off their heating as our utilities have become so expensive, and this week I read about people actually turning off their fridges to save money. We didn’t have lots of spare cash when our children were small, but we certainly didn’t have to turn off the fridge or freezer (though as my children will no doubt remind me, I was always saying ‘no we’re not having the heating on till the end of October! Put a jumper on!’) And they always had plenty of presents at Christmas and on birthdays. I know they appreciate that.
The Fleetwood Mac tribute act we went to see on Saturday turned out to be rather disappointing. They didn’t even come onto the stage till almost 10, performed a rather lacklustre set, then at ten to eleven all of them except the Lindsay Buckingham substitute just wandered off – he spent ages retuning his guitar, then launched into two unimpressive guitar solos (though, in true Lindsay Buckingham style, he was clearly most impressed with himself – he was certainly getting into character!) before announcing that ‘we’ll take a short break and come back for the second half.’ By then it felt late even for a brief encore – the running time had said it would finish at 11, so I’m afraid we decided to leave. We weren’t the only ones, although most of the younger people were just decamping into the nearby clubs – we, being ancient, went home and ate toast in our own kitchen. You can’t win them all.
This weekend we will be back in Edinburgh to see Alabama 3, a band that’s been around in various guises for decades. They come not from Alabama but Brixton (a notorious but now partly gentrified area of London). I don’t know that much about them but I’ve been listening to their music and it sounds great, so I’m looking forward to that. It’s a sort of mixture of country, blues and acid house. They’re complete mavericks.
Tomorrow will be far more respectable, as I am going with my friend Heather to a very smart Christmas craft fair in Banchory (affluence central, so far as Deeside is concerned.) I probably won’t buy a thing, but she’ll make up for me.
Jeff, I finished PAYBACK, but to be honest I wasn’t that taken with it. It’s had great reviews though, so it’s probably just me. I thought it dragged in the middle, then the ending was rushed and unconvincing. I’ll be interested to hear what you think if you watch it. I looked for all of those series you mentioned last week, and every one of them was on pay-to-view here. We already pay for Amazon Prime, Disney and Netflix, so I probably won’t pay for any more.
Good news tonight is that the final season of THE CROWN is finally starting. In the meantime I’ve been watching the newish adaptation of one of Louise Penny’s THREE PINES novels. I’ve only seen the first episode so far, but I think they’ve done quite a good job, I like Alfred Molina as Gamache.
I hope everyone has a good week,
Rosemary
You and Jeff are both welcome for the mention of Claire Keegan, Rosemary. I’m looking forward to reading it on Friday.
That’s just so sad about the children and their families. I never thought of my family as well-off, but we certainly were in comparison. And, as you said, my parents always made sure we had heat, food, and plenty of Christmas presents. Christmas was a wonderful holiday in our house.
Contrast that with Sue Perkins’ stories of the lives of the Vietnamese in her book. Such a contrast!
Thank you again, for sharing your accounts of bands and travels. Hugs!
I agree with you on PAYBACK. Jackie watched a similar Swedish show, where the innocent wife gets drawn into the criminal web by her husband’s actions. Not really my taste in shows.
We’ve been watching the first series of MUM and thanks for recommending it. The son’s girlfriend is well meaning, but man, is she dumb! And she never shuts up, does she? And the brother’s girlfriend Pauline is a truly odious person.
We’re on the third series of SUSPECTS.
Jeff, I’m glad you like Mum, As the series progress, we learn more about the girlfriend and why she is as she is. At one point her mother appears (played by the brilliant Catherine Tate) and that explains a lot.
By the end of the final series almost all of the characters have developed into people we like despite their bad behaviour or silliness. (Almost all – there’s one exception.) Isn’t Lesley Manville good in the role? She conveys so much by saying so little.
I just finished reading Daniel Silva’s Portrait of an Unknown Woman. It’s an entertaining read with clever dialogue. There are numerous twists and turns in the story.
Good morning, Jacqueline. I’m glad you found some time to read even as you’re working on promotions for your own books. Thanks for joining us today!
Hi Lesa and all! Work has been intense, so after the Christmas giveaway post I indulged in the first two Christmas Tree Farm mysteries, TWELVE SLAYS OF CHRISTMAS and ‘TWAS THE KNIFE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. They did their job of entertaining me, and I swooned over the descriptions of Maine in winter. It doesn’t hurt that I love Christmas!
I also read BLOOD SISTERS by Vanessa Lillie. I wanted to love it but just couldn’t in the end. On the plus side I thought the author did a good job of showing how damaging trauma can be and how it manifests in individuals and communities. I’ll just pick a couple minuses. There was too much plot and a little too much lecturing. And the ending felt rushed, with things (mostly) wrapped in a neat bow. I was hoping it was a first novel and that some of these flaws might diminish over time, but it looks like the author has written other books as well.
You’re right about Blood Sisters, Trisha. Like you, I wanted to love it. The synopsis was better than the book.
I’m glad you enjoyed the Christmas Tree Farm books, and the descriptions of Maine!
Busy week, but I did finish two books in the “entertaining, but…” category.
I’ve seen quite a few mentions (elsewhere) for Alex Hay’s debut novel THE HOUSEKEEPERS. Set in 1905 London, in the time of big houses, broken families & ambition. Layered on this is a complicated heist plot driven by revenge. It didn’t quite work for me, the two layers never meshing well. And possibly I’ve seen this book mentioned often because it won the 2023 Caledonia Novel Award – a talent search, open to unagented new writers.
Also in the doesn’t-quite-work-for-me category… MURDER ON THE CHRISTMAS EXPRESS by Alexandra Benedict. I picked this up from the library new-books shelf as it was holiday themed. Published in the UK last year and in the US just recently, it features a train, social media, locked-room murders, a romance and victims of sexual abuse. It even included a recipe for “tablet”, a sugary confection from Scotland. But not the warm-fuzzies I was expecting for a holiday theme.
And to finish out the reading week, THE BOOK OF CHARLIE: Wisdom From The Remarkable American Life of a 109-year-old Man. David Von Drehle writes about his remarkable Kansas City neighbor, Charlie White. Resilience, optimism and willingness to grow made Charlie a master in the art of thriving through times of dramatic change. “Live, learn and move on”. In writing this book the author extrapolates how Charlie’s traits can add to anyone’s life.
MM, I didn’t read either of the books you mentioned, although I looked at both of them. And, you’re right. I expect some warm fuzzies from Christmas books. Murder on the Christmas Express just didn’t look like it was going to work.
The mornings in Ohio may be cold but our afternoon have been beautiful. We were at 68° yesterday in Cincinnati.
Two books this week. The Good Part by Sophie Cousens was a good read for me. Lucy Young is at wits end in her professional and personal life. Walking home in the rain from another disastrous date she slips into a building with a wishing machine. The old woman who runs it gives her the coins where Lucy wishes to skip to the good part. She wakes up in bed 12 years later next to her husband with a successful career and 2 small children. Now she has to decide if she wants to stay in the future or go back to her old life. This was funny and emotional albeit predictable but I liked it a lot.
Next I read The Air Raid Book Club by Annie Lyons. Although it is nothing like the Mitford series, it reminded me of those books. A quiet gentle story with characters I cared about. Gertie is a widow running a book store when WWII breaks out. Her family friend convinces her to take in a German Jewish girl. Predictably Hedy and Gertie have a period of adjustment. Gertie also builds a bomb shelter off the book store filled with bookshelves where they read during the raids. I liked this one too.
Tomorrow brings much needed rain and the preparations for my family’s visit over Thanksgiving.
Happy Reading!
You were about 10 degrees warmer than us yesterday, Sharon. We’re to have those temperatures today, though.
Thank you for your comments about The Air Raid Book Club. I have a copy somewhere. All the more reason to pick it up. Thank you!
Have a good week, and enjoy the family next week!
I’m reading THE GENERAL’S GOLD by LynDee Walker & Bruce Robert Coffin
59 degrees in North Texas. Think I am posting too late,
Real life has interfered with reading in a big way recently, but I have galleys of a dozen 2024 releases and I’m getting started on them. First up is E.A. Aymar’s When She Left. (February, but I’m bumping it ahead of some January books.) Ed is a vital part of our local DC area mystery community and has done wonderful work helping writers promote their books at Noir at the Bar events. He is also one heck of a writer, with a special talent for characterization. Here’s the official book description. I’ve just started it, but I expect to enjoy it as much as his previous books.
****************
A young couple fleeing a criminal family confronts a reluctant assassin in this heart-pounding thriller from E.A. Aymar.
When Melissa Cruz falls hard for a dreamy-eyed photographer named Jake, she can’t resist the urge to run away with him. The problem is that she already has a boyfriend, a rising star in his family’s crime organization. Betrayed and humiliated, Chris isn’t going to just let her go.
To find Melissa, Chris turns to Lucky Wilson, one of his family’s professional assassins. But Lucky has his own problems. After years of lying about his day job, his marriage is in shambles and he suffers from relentless panic attacks. He’ll do this job if Chris will let him out of the killing life.
Lucky knows this is his best chance at salvaging the home life he always craved. But Melissa and Jake aren’t going to abandon their chance at something real—something they’ve both been lacking in their lives. But they aren’t the only ones desperate to survive, and a powerful criminal family isn’t the only danger.
And soon, it’s clear that an unlikely partnership might be the only way for any of them to make it out alive…
Sandra, That’s a promising premise for When She Left. I hope you enjoy it!
Don’t you hate it when real life interferes with your reading life? Have a good week, and maybe you’ll find time to read some of those books piling up.
I have loved Barbra Streisand since the beginning of time.
Did I love every single page of her 970+ pages of MY NAME IS BARBRA?
Yep. Every word.
Kaye, in June of 1967, Jackie and I (we started going out that year) and a friend went to Central Park to see a FREE concert by Barbra Streisand. We were there early enough to see her come out for rehearsal in the afternoon, and to see her interact with the audience. It was (naturally) a much smaller concert than the 1981 Simon & Garfunkel reunion concert, but we were much closer and saw her from pretty close up.
Oh, my goodness! WHAT an experience!!!! And quite the memory.
I agree with Kaye. What a wonderful memory, Jeff!
I have it on hold at the library, Kaye!
It’s a bit colder here. The forecasters have been calling for rain for days, but they keep being wrong. Makes you wonder about climate change, for sure.
I’ve been sick with flu all week. I’ve been reading, but it’s possible my mood affected my satisfaction level.
I read:
The Devil We Know by Robert Baer; A book about how Iraq’s government is perfectly rational, kind, and totally supported by the people, and how all of the problems are my fault. I didn’t believe it for a second.
Chantilly Lace by Gordon Peter Wilson; In NOLA, an assessor hoping to be able to be at least corrupt enough to pay his gambling debts, learns about an illegal lottery run in a Vietnamese store. He goes there hoping for a payoff, but law enforcement is interested as well. A lot of historical stuff that doesn’t go anywhere.
Doubloon Cove by Kelly Novak; Kid’s mystery with a lot of pro-freemason propaganda, which I thought was weird. You don’t see that in a kid’s book very often. Anyway, they have to find the MacGuffin before the evil doers. Not up to the level of The Three Investigators, but pretty good for these times.
Dark Angel by Seabury Quinn; Third volume of Jules de Grandin stories. It took me a couple of years to read them all, one story a week. One of the premier supernatural detectives of the pulps. This volume collects the sole novella, The Devil’s Bride, which I’ve been meaning to read for a long time.
So Long by Blake Pierce; A female FBI agent traumatized after an encounter with a serial killer, gets a similarly damaged dog, and goes after a serial killer a lot like buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs.
Containing Big Tech by Tom Kemp; A guy who made a lot of money from big tech is now all for containing the. He makes a good argument all the way until he starts talking about misinformation and conspiracy theories, where he loses his thread. He states several conspiracy theories he believes, and trusts the government, which gives out all kinds of misinformation, to monitor other misinformation. It makes absolutely no sense, and ruins the whole book.
I’m sorry, Glen. I hope you start to feel better soon.
It’s the Seabury Quinn book that sounds interesting since you took the time to read them over the years. I think I would have enjoyed a lot of the pulps.
Just finished Resurrection Walk, by Michael Connelly. Wonderful. I listened to the audio and it was very clear and compelling.
Luckily I have several Harry Bosch books I had skipped when I once again picked up the series as Bosch meets Ballard, so I can read earlier Bosch books until the next one.
I do want to read something by Claire Keegan, but I keep saying that and it never happens. Maybe because the four books I have by her are in ebook format and I have a hard time reading those.
I read two books this week, both very short. First was THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE. I did not really enjoy reading this book, and I was surprised because so many people have said that they liked it. I often have to force myself to read noir mysteries but usually I surprise myself and find a lot to like. Not this time. I can see that James M. Cain is a very good writer and tells a good story, but the characters were too unpleasant. However, the ending was much better, not happy of course, but satisfying. It is hard to say much about short books like this (120 pages) without spoiling the book.
Next, another very short novel at 128 pages. (I have been reading novellas for the Novellas in November event.) This one was WHERE THERE’S LOVE, THERE’S HATE, and it was written by Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo, Argentine writers. It was originally published in 1946. The introduction describes the book as a “tongue-in-cheek mystery somewhere between detective spoof and romantic satire.” Not exactly written for laughs, but very light-hearted and not taking things too seriously. What I really loved was all the asides about books and writing and even book translations. The characters were all fun and sometimes not what they seemed.
Glen read CITY UNDER ONE ROOF by Iris Yamashita. Several commenters here have mentioned this book and Lesa has reviewed it. The general premise is “a murder in a tiny Alaskan town where everyone lives in a single high-rise building.” He enjoyed it. He likes books with bad weather settings and this book fit the bill.
I am now reading CITY UNDER ONE ROOF, and have read about 40 or 50 pages (of 300 pages). I am liking it too. Jeff pointed me to a TV series (The Wall) that is based on a similar town in Canada, available on PBS Masterpiece I think, which we don’t have access to right now.
Tracy, City Under One Roof has its ups and downs, but I found the whole premise fascinating. I’m glad Glen liked it, and I hope you continue to like it.
It’s been years, but I read The Postman Always Rings Twice. Okay, but I never went back to read it again.
I completely forgot to stop by and comment. But it’s still Thursday my time….
I’m currently reading OVER MY DEAD BLOG by Sarah E. Burr. This is the first in a new series…the Book Blogger Mysteries. Obviously, I had to give it a try. I’m enjoying it very much. Hoping to finish on Friday.