2016 reading, August
30 books, nearly caught up to schedule.
Writing All Wrongs - Ellery Adams 8/1/16 Books by the Bay #7 Olivia & her husband Sawyer the police chief go to Palmetto Island for their few-days honeymoon, to be joined by the rest of the local writers' group at a pirate festival, which has a Guest of Honor Silas, the star & writer of a tv show about pirate exploits called No Quarter. Stressing the violence of Exploits in all senses! But a number of unhappy events building up to Silas' girlfriend's murder take place, and another friend of Olivia's is nearly made scapegoat.
Murder in the Paperback Parlor - Ellery Adams 8/3/16 Book Retreat #2 Jane Steward is the Guardian of her family's library of very rare books, kept where no outsider is supposed to be able to get at them, at their hotel in North Carolina, where she holds interest-based conventions. The current one is called Romancing the Reader, featuring a costume ball, a Male Cover Model contest, and an auction with one prize giving the winner naming rights for a major character. Four authors are to be present, but two are deadly rivals, and one of the two is poisoned with castor beans. The obvious killer didn't, but several have motive.
Miss Julia Stands Her Ground - Ann B. Ross 8/4/16 Hazel Marie, Miss Julia's first husband's long-time mistress and mother of his 9-year-old son, has an uncle Brother Vern, who has thought of another way to get his paws on her son Little Lloyd's inheritance: he has suborned perjury from his deacon Lonnie Whitmire. Whitmire has stated & Vern has notarized his claim that Little Lloyd is his son, and unfortunately Whitmire looks terribly like Wesley Lloyd Springer. Julia & her new husband Sam struggle to get incontrovertible proof that Brother Vern & Whitmire are lying scumbags, Hazel Marie is not, and the only way is DNA evidence. Unfortunately Wesley senior has been dead for 3 years; Julia was so furious when Hazel Marie & Little Lloyd showed up at her door that she got rid of everything personal of her adulterous cheapskate husband's, and lest Little Lloyd find out, who already has identity issues, she doesn't tell Hazel Marie of this new threat. The possibility of an exhumation order stands over everything, with the gossip that would arise. Fortunately Lillian, Julia's cook/housekeeper, saved Wesley Lloyd's pocket watch, to which he had attached a gold-plated extracted wisdom tooth: DNA!
The Waters of Eternal Youth - Donna Leon 8/4/16 Brunetti #25 15 years earlier, the granddaughter of a Venetian contessa was pulled from a canal, unfortunately after she had suffered brain damage from lack of oxygen, giving her the mental capacity of a seven-year-old. The grandmother is a dear close friend of Brunetti's mother-in-law. Nonna is now 86 & wants to know what happened, to ease her own mind. The man who pulled Manuela out was & is still a hopeless drunk, unable to remember much -unless- drunk, a poor witness even then. Manuela nearly drowned at age 4, has been terrified of water, and would not willingly have walked near the edge, ergo someone pushed her. Who & why?
London War Notes, 1939-1945 - Mollie Panter-Downes 8/8/16 Edited by William Shawn from her fortnightly posts to The New Yorker. My history knowledge is almost good enough to get the references, but I hadn't realized the frustration of the British public with the amount of time it took to get the invasion of Normandy going, post-Dunkirk. 3 bloody years, in all senses. I was au fait with the shortages, having read the wartime diaries of Nella Last, Mass Observation Chronicles.
The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos - Patrick Leigh Fermor 8/11/16 Mostly Bulgaria and Rumania, beautifully written, recommend 5 star.
Halloween Murder - Shelley Freydont 8/5/16 Lindy Haggerty #4 Lindy returns to her home in New Jersey in time to be drafted as part of the organizers of a Halloween festival to raise funds for a restoration of a local farmhouse to be used as a teen center, with a time limit: if the funds aren't in place by January 1, the farm is passed on to a local man with a greedy daughter who has already tried to get him declared incompetent because of his lifestyle. Complications: a fundamentalist church leader from NYC and his parish picketing the “Satanist” goings-on, a drug dealer infiltrating, the local clean-cut high school kids vs the ones who have already been nailed for possession at least once trying to stay clean who also are the cast of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, a spoiled-rotten & psycho daughter returned with a very charming but rotten man, the high school English teacher dying of cancer & her replacement who is doing the tough-love thing with the Crucible cast, and two murders. Lindy ropes in her friends from the dance company she works with, all NYCers somewhat out of their element in the wilds of suburban NJ.
A Very Merry Murder - Shelley Freydont 8/6/16 Lindy Haggerty #5 & last: misleading title: Chirtmas has very little to do with it. The annual Professional Ballroom Dance competition is at Atlantic City this year, Lindy's boss Jeremy has accepted a gig to perform, so she's there as rehearsal director. Bill, her platonic friend for the past 2 years, is also there for a vacation. Bill is retired from NYPD and teaches college-level criminology, but he still has ties with everyone he went to the police academy with, and Andrew, a classmate, is with the Atlantic City PD. Lindy's friend Rose knows well a number of the dance school teachers/owners, as she used to do costumes for them before switching to legit theater. A number of Russian dancers are cleaning up in the professional awards categories with their ballet backgrounds and are resented by the Americans. Shane, one of the Americans, is killed, dressed in his Russian partner's dress made by Enrico, who had a meltdown 4 years ago & retreated to Italy but is now returned with a new (probably FANTASTIC) collection to be unveiled the night after the murder, but the collection is cut up in small pieces, most vindictively - poor security in the hotel. Katja, Shane's partner, vanishes. Dawn, her employer/instructor, melts down, confesses to the murder but is not believed, obviously protecting Katja, whom she treats as a substitute most-cherished daughter. Junie (probably Junius, but never stated) is Dawn's ex-partner in dance, love, & business, has a competing studio less than 5 miles away; they fight (verbally) nonstop. Junie was hiring Shane away & had a new dance partner, Felicia, for him. Enrico literally rips Felicia's dress off - it is a botched copy of the dress Enrico made for Katja. 1. Who killed Shane & why? 2. Who stole the design of Enrico's dress? 3. How did the murderer get Katja's dress, and onto Shane's dead body? Many of the dancers are strong enough to wrangle it on. Lindy is also dealing with the breakup of her 20-year marriage, Glen, her husband won't talk to her, and Bill is referred to by Jeremy's dance company as the wannabe, as in her lover.
Foul Play at the Fair - Shelley Freydont 8/13/16 Celebration Bay #1 Olivia (Liv) is a former event planner in Manhattan tired of the bridezillas & has moved to far-upstate NY to run festivals in her new small town. A local verybad boy has returned after 30 years now in disguise as part of a juggling troupe - the troupe didn't know his past & doesn't much like him, any more than the town did. Of course he turns up dead, but he is found in his brother's apple press. Brother is taken in for questioning but hadn't even recognized him, so has no motive. Lots of other people did - blackmail. The town trustees are afraid the town's reputation will suffer as a tourist mecca if this isn't cleaned up pronto & threaten to cancel all festivals, so Liv has to find out. But, as a non-local, she has a hard time getting information that everyone else has known for years.
Aunty Lee's Deadly Specials #2 - Ovidia Yu 8/13/16 Aunty Rosie Lee is a rich elderly widow in Singapore keeping busy with her lunch cafe/catering business. But when a client & her son are poisoned during a party Aunty Lee is catering, the business is shut down. Mabel, the client, owns a law firm & is a law professor, Henry, her husband, is a surgeon retired by his Parkinson's disease, their son is returned home to die of AIDS & is a thoroughly unlikable person, their daughter Sharon has just been made a partner in the law firm - another thoroughly unlikable person. Mabel is also setting up illegal organ transplants to fund their lifestyle and get a new heart for the son. Someone tries to frame Aunty Lee for the poisoning - who?
Aunty Lee's Chilled Revenge #3 - Ovidia Yu 8/15/16 Aunty Lee's business partner Cherril was involved in a pet rescue group; Allison, a Brit expat adopter, had her puppy euthanized for chewing the furniture, contrary to the adoption contract, which specified that the dog would be returned if unsatisfactory, then lied to the agency trying to cover up and was vilified online, then fled back to the UK. Her marriage broke up; 5 years afterward she returned to Singapore to sue the members of the agency for alienation of her husband's affection because she became bipolar from the stress. (Huh? It doesn't happen that way.) She was murdered while her sister Vallerie was meeting Cherril & two other members at Aunty Lee's restaurant. Vallerie is terrified, refuses to go back to the hotel, Aunty Lee offers to house her & becomes very involved in the investigation, as usual. And this is only the beginning.
Nursery Crimes - Ayelet Waldman 8/16/16 Mommy Track #1 Juliet Applebaum, former federal public defender and now stay-at-home mom of 1.7 children, flunks nursery school entrance interview with 2.5 year-old daughter Ruby & husband Peter. The school principal is killed hit-and-run that night, & Juliet can't leave the investigation to the fuzz. Funny.
The Big Nap - Ayelet Waldman 8/16/16 Mommy Track #2 Juliet's 4-month-old son does not sleep. She thinks she's slept 15 minutes in 4 months. On a visit to a kosher grocery store, the
proprietor's niece Fraydle is dragooned into babysitting, turns up the next day, Juliet sleeeeps for 2 hours, & arranges for Fraydle to return the next day, but Fraydle doesn't come. She's missing. Juliet finds herself in the midst of a very Orthodox situation - Fraydle is betrothed to a rabbi in Brooklyn, not completely willingly. Her rabbi father is capable of forcing her, her mother not so much, but Juliet takes her two kids to her own parents in NJ to suss out whether Fraydle has been hidden by her prospective in-laws. No further spoilers. Not as funny as the previous one, but with light touches.
A Playdate with Death - Ayelet Waldman Mommy Track #3 8/17/16 Juliet's trainer at the gym is shot, police & his family conclude suicide - he is a recovered meth addict with a fiancee also an addict, but he has recently been told he is adopted. Adoptive family: parents & one sister M.D.s, brother & other sister equally achieving. He is a carrier of the Tay-Sachs gene, well known to be found in the Ashkenazi group. Has succeeded in tracing his biological parents, mother rejects him but he is stubborn. So suicide? Or murder, & if so, why? Tay-Sachs turns out also to run in Irish & Cajun families, which I didn't know. 3 more in this series, then the author switches to serious fiction, in which I am NOT interested.
Bruno, Chief of Police - Martin Walker 8/18/16 #1 in series, Bruno is the only policeman in the village of St Denis, in the Dordogne. Two men who were in the Resistance but in different factions still won't talk to each other after 60 years. They march in parades with the two most honorable flags, that of France and of Lorraine (for de Galle). Hamid, an elderly Algerian man is murdered & ha a swastika carved on his corpse after the May 8 parade - his son teaches math at the lycee, his grandson is the tobacconist and most valuable player on the rugby team. Town very upset, parade in support of no racism is disrupted by Front National thugs, Bruno makes national & European news in defense of several women. Suspects: the local doctor's just-turned-17 son & his girlfriend, who use the area near Hamid's cottage for sex. Girlfriend also is involved in Front National (tres conservatif, anti-immigrant). But when Bruno & the police inspector raid her house (they've been truant from school) they find Major International Drug Complications. So is Hamid's death connected with drugs, or something else? Writing very good, also plotting & characterization. 4 star!!! Will read more - this is 2009, at least 4 more books. Writing style more polished, like Sayers.
Die Like an Eagle - Donna Andrews 8/1816 In which Josh & Jamie, age 7, take up baseball, Michael is coaching, and the league president is Biff Brown, who has a shady construction company and has anger management issues while coaching teams in 2 age groups. He also makes up rules to suit himself, including one prohibiting unofficial practices at other locations which Meg immediately circumvents by having a picnic for all the members of the boys team, resulting in parents being afraid to protest lest he take it out on their kids. On Opening Day his brother is found shot dead in one of Biff's porta-potties. Now was Shep mistaken for Biff, or killed as himself? Many reasons to off Biff, a few for Shep. Definitely up to Donna's usual standard.
A Nice Murder for Mom - James Yaffe 8/18/16 NYC detective moves west as a public defender. His mother has figured out a number of his cases before & he's only had to find the evidence. In this, a bullying professor is killed. If Mom explains it to Davie, a number of people will be miserable, & he deserved it. I don't care for this format & won't read any more.
Rivers of London: Body Work - Ben Aaronovitch, etc 8/19/16 Graphic novel, not really meh, but no more for me. BMW is possessed.
Murder for Treasure - David Williams 8/23/16 Mark Treasure #4, the one I had missed. Mark is in West Wales, asked for '2 reasons: 1) his host knows another of Marks friends, for whom he cleared up a murder, there was a body that went missing, and 2) an American firm wants to buy a Welsh one, his host own 51% & feels nothing but contempt for the buyer, and Mark's bank is acting for the buyer, so he is supposed to -persuade-. En route, Mark shares a train compartment with a man obviously in disguise, who later is attacked. Mark nearly captures the attackers and the -victim- does a runner. Huh? And then it gets even more complicated.
The Charm Bracelet - Viola Shipman 8/26/16 for library reading group. Sweet book, 3 living generations plus grandmother's mother & grandmother's stories, attached to each charm. Grandmother is starting dementia, mother is having job trouble, daughter a senior in college with a major she hates but took for financial security prospects & should have majored in art. Set in Glen Arbor, MI and Chicago.
The Night the Gods Smiled - Eric Wright 8/25/16 Charlie Salter #1 (1983) Detective in Toronto. A professor of English is killed at an annual conference in Montreal, but he & his 3 colleagues are all from a college in Toronto, Charlie is stuck with the interviewing. Possibly a hooker in Montreal, or intradepartmental conflict, or random? Two of the three professors are disagreeable to the reader (& Charlie, who is not a terribly likable man)
Smoke Detector - Eric Wright 8/27/16 Charlie Salter #2 A second-hand store has a fire, its owner dies of smoke inhalation, and the murder squad is overwhelmed, so Charlie gets the case. The owner was a chiseler but not a fence, but his wife was a business partner only, not a lover. The third floor of the building was set up for his trysts - he liked women & was good-looking enough to have no trouble getting sex. Suspects: his bisexual assistant, whom he razzed; his wife, for the money; a plumber whom he disagreed with about a bill; his current mistress, who had another lover; et cetera. Lots of character analysis by Charlie.
The Man Who Changed His Name - Eric Wright 8/28/16 Charlie Salter #4 - missed one, ordered used but not here yet. In this, Charlie's ex-wife of 25 years ago comes to his office to prod about the case of a friend of a friend, a woman separated from her husband in Winnipeg, killed in Toronto. She had advertised in the looking-for-a-relationship column and was a social worker, so the police looked among her clients and in the letters responding to her ad, found nothing, and were concluding that it was a weirdo, with no hope of solving. Charlie cracks a faked alibi, after clearing a number of suspects.
Killer Mousse - Melinda Wells 8/28/16 Della Cooks #1 Della is the widow of an LAPD detective. Also a former high school English teacher and the proprietor of a small cooking school, she is just starting to tape a cable cooking show. Mimi, the fired cook she is replacing is sprung on Della as her first taster-from-the-audience and dies on-air - someone has added ground up peanuts to Della's chocolate mousse > anaphylactic shock, obviously murder. Della had never met Mimi until right before the taping & didn't know of the allergy. Many other suspects - Mimi was a very nasty woman, and things keep escalating. 4 stars.
Death Takes the Cake - Melinda Wells 8/29/16 Della Cooks #2 Della's boss Mickey' s son Addison has the idea of a Reality TV cake contest between Della & 4 professional chefs, using the awful cake mix made by Reggie's food products company. Reggie is a very unfriend of Della's from college. Reggie had been a thief (though very rich), Della exposed her, & Reggie vowed to kill Della if their paths ever crossed again. Reggie is murdered soon after the contest is set up. Bill, one of Della's good friends, is framed. His wife Liddy is Della's very best friend. Suspects are people whom Reggie had had investigated to find a vulnerability of Della's.
The Proof Is In the Pudding - Melinda Wells 8/30/16 Della Cooks #3 Della is roped in as a judge at a celebrity cooking contest, a charitable event at Gene Long's fabulous hotel in Beverly Hills. A smoke bomb goes off, Keith Ingram - another judge, who makes female conquests and videotapes the encounters - is murdered. John O'Hara, Della's husband's police partner, had decked Ingram earlier, in revenge for threatening John's daughter Eileen, and of course cannot investigate, nor can his partner Weaver - he's #1 suspect but didn't do it. Manny Hatch is given the case, but he hates John and Weaver for having cleared a case he failed on, and will ignore any evidence clearing John. Della has a late coffee with Roland Gray, another judge who also writes Len Deighton-type thrillers. Gray is shot at during their meeting, & since John has an alibi during that event, Hatch insists it wasn't related. Really? /immense irony/ Duh.
Code of Silence - Sally S. Wright 8/26/16 Ben Reese #0.5 He is the Archivist at Alderton University in 1957, having been a US Army Ranger in WWII Europe. Carl Weber is a professor of languages at OSU who has been keeping watch over Susannah, a woman who worked at the predecessor to the current NSA and has to vanish again. Carl had been in love with Miriam, who suspected someone was spying for Russia in 1944, but Miriam was defenestrated before she could give Carl the proof. He found it years later - the book is about the spy trying to get back the proof & killing anyone in his way.
Sally Wright's writng style much more polished than all of the cozies I've been reading.
Publish & Perish - Sally S. Wright 8/26/16 Ben Reese #1 8/26/16 Ben's good friend Richard West, also a professor at Alderton, but a nitpicker to the nth degree, calls Ben to say he has found a grievous injustice and intends to set it right. He dies that night - angina, but his pills are handy. So why didn't he take any? A French professor also chokes on her vomit after telling Ben that Richard confirmed to her about the injustice but didn't say what it was. Several academic problems make possible motives for murder. Ben is Richard's executor, so he has to get it cleared up lest an heir profit.
Pride & Predator - Sally S. Wright 8/30/16 Ben Reese #2 Jonathan, a Scots landowner/clergyman, is stung by several bees > anaphylactic shock. Murder or accident? Suspects: his wife Ellie's distant cousin who nearly married her before she met Jon; one of his oh-so-righteous parishioners, who has been misbehaving; the man he was about to sell his house to under the condition that the buyer would not turn it into a conference center but would have; the woman who loved him since she was 9 & he 14, madly jealous of Ellie; Alex, his best friend, who only dolts think had a yen for Ellie; his brother, who everyone says couldn't possibly. Alibis are made to be broken.
Pursuit & Persuasion - Sally S. Wright 8/31/16 Ben Reese #3 Georgina, the widow of a Scot who owned a tyre manufacturing company and still has a more than controlling interest, is also a professor of English literature at (fictional) Aberdeen University and is teaching a summer course at Oxford. Ben's apprentice archivist (at Alderton University in Ohio) Ellen is the daughter of Georgina's best friend and is stunned to find out that she is Georgina's principal heir when Georgina dies suddenly in Oxford. The death is ruled accidental - something made her nauseated and she aspirated the vomitus. No cause has been found for the vomiting, after eliminating several possibilities. Ben is still in Scotland waiting for the trial of Jonathan's killer in the previous book; Ellen requests his help as someone she knows she can trust. #1 problem: what caused the nausea? It wasn't standard poison. Motives are plentiful: neighbor objecting to the noise of the quarry G. had reopened, tenant wanting to open a falconry, nephew wanting her stock in the tyre company, tenant whom she discovered collected books without scruple, and several others. Ben has to figure out who had the means to make/derive/whatever the poison, then had an opportunity to administer it. I was confused throughout and still am after finishing the book and rereading the administration scene - no ties between the person who gave it to her and the person who admits making it. Major plot hole, but still fascinated by Ben's doggedness.