Two for the price of one

I recently read two of Joseph Heywood's Woods Cop Mysteries back-to-back. It's actually been a while since I read them so my memory may be a bit hazy but here are my thoughts on them.

Buckular Dystrophy

This was the tenth book in the series. 

"Buckular dystrophy" is a term coined by conservation officers to describe a kind of addiction to killing deer, not for sport or food, but seemingly just because they are there and because they can. The action takes place during Michigan's two-week firearm deer season when it seems that a lot of hunters go just a little bit crazy. During this time, game wardens are on duty all the time and have no personal life to call their own. 

In this instance, Game Warden Grady Service inexplicably takes on longtime violator Limpy Allerdyce as his partner. But it is actually a genius move because nobody knows violators like another violator and Limpy leads him into a bizarre series of cases involving deer. 

I particularly like these stories for their interesting descriptions of the landscape and wildlife of the Upper Peninsula and of some of the characters that live there. Heywood does spin a good yarn.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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Chasing a Blond Moon

I actually read this book (which is #3 in the series) after the later book which I just described. I generally like to read series books in order but sometimes I just go rogue and that's what I did in this case.

The plot here was complicated and a bit hard for me to follow at times but here's what I can tell you about it: As an early book in the series, this one is still letting us get to know Grady Service. We learn that he's not just a man of the woods but also someone who knows a bit about wine and good food. He can cook! 

We learn that there is a woman in his life, Maridly Nantz. Also, he has a son from an earlier relationship, a son that he has only just learned about. The plot also involves a bit of politics, a state senator who is running for governor of the state. It is a heady mix and made for a robust tale. I think I will be reading more in this series.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars  

Two reviews

I've fallen a bit behind on reviewing the books that I've read. I blame it all on Thanksgiving. In an effort to catch up, here are reviews of two books that I've read recently from the Thursday Murder Club series.

The Man Who Died Twice

by Richard Osman

This is the second book in the series and it brings us once again the four septuagenarians whose hobby is solving murders. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim, and Ron join together to find a murderer when Elizabeth, a former spy, receives a letter from an old colleague asking for her help. His life is being threatened by a violent mobster over his involvement with some stolen diamonds.

These four are not your ordinary septuagenarians. They have particularly interesting backgrounds and skill sets. In addition to Elizabeth, the former spy, there is Joyce, the retired nurse who has an eccentric and quirky personality; Ron, the retired labor organizer who is very interested in politics and loves talking about it; and Ibrahim, the introverted psychiatrist who is blessed (or cursed) with a photographic memory.

In addition to the matter of the stolen diamonds, we have a second mystery involving Ibrahim who was mugged right outside the police station. The three other members of the Thursday Murder Club get to work assisting the police in their inquiries in trying to find the assailant. Soon the dead bodies begin to pile up but we can be sure with the Thursday Murder Club on the job all will be resolved and all the culprits identified and locked up.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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The Bullet That Missed

by Richard Osman 

The Coopers Chase Retirement Village where all the members of the Thursday Murder Club reside seems to be a very dangerous place. Bodies are dropping like flies and none of them are dropping from old age or natural causes. 

The Thursday Murder Club continues its hobby of investigating and solving cold murder cases, but in addition to those cold cases, new bodies keep turning up. Elizabeth, Ron, Joyce, and Ibrahim hardly have time to look into those old cases because they are kept busy helping their police friends, Donna De Freitas and Chris Hudson, to investigate the new murders. In addition, someone is threatening Elizabeth and the sleuths need to discover who and stop whoever it is.

There's quite a lot going on in this one involving a fraud and money laundering scheme in addition to suicide and/or murder. But trust the "Fab Four" to be able to sort it all out and root out the evil mind behind it all.

I quite like the members of the Thursday Murder Club and I am looking forward to reading more in the series. I think the series could well become one of my favorite cozy reads. 

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Raging Storm by Ann Cleeves: A review

 

This is the third entry in Ann Cleeves' latest series of mysteries, the one featuring Detective Matthew Venn. I must confess up front that Matthew Venn is not my favorite of Cleeves' creations. (Are you ever going to give us another Vera Stanhope mystery, Ms. Cleeves?) But I'll take what I can get.

This tale is set in the little village of Greystone in Devon. It involves a former member of that community named Jem Rosco. Rosco has made a name for himself as a sailor and adventurer who has roamed the world. Now he has returned to rent a nearby cottage, but, within a month of returning, he disappears and soon his dead body is discovered in a dingy off Scully Cove. He had been murdered.

The case is assigned to Matthew Venn and he and his sergeant Jen Rafferty along with another member of the team, Ross May, hurry to the scene. We learn that Greystone has troubling memories for Venn whose problematic family history is so much a part of his personal makeup. Many residents of Greystone are members of the strict religious community to which Venn's parents belonged and which he was a part of as a child. He left all that behind as soon as he was able but it still haunts him in many ways.

The detectives discover a complex story with many tangled relationships and the more they investigate the more convoluted the story becomes. The investigative team's own personal relationships with each other also play a role in the probe. Jen is a single mother of two teenagers and struggles to balance her work with her personal life. Ross is jealous of her. He is younger and feels that he is not sufficiently appreciated, even though it seems like Venn goes out of his way to praise him and make him feel a part of the team.  

Cleeves gives us a very atmospheric tale and builds suspense around the storms that constantly threaten the coastal town. The book is also filled with the strong characters that are a forte of her writing. She is a master at describing those characters in such vivid detail that we feel we know them and would recognize them if they walked in the door. 

The books in this series could easily be read as standalone novels, but I feel they are enhanced by reading them in order. And now I will be looking forward to number four in the Matthew Venn series. 

Rituals by Mary Anna Evans: A review

This is the eighth book in the Faye Longchamp mystery series. I was interested in reading the series in the first place because of its archeological connection. Faye is an archaeologist. But the series seems to be evolving into an archeological romance/mystery with an emphasis on the romance. While the series in general has been a fairly enjoyable read, I'm not sure I will continue with it after this entry as romance is not really my main reading interest. And there are so many other books on my "to-be-read" list that are demanding my attention.

Rituals finds Faye and her adopted teenage daughter, Amande, in a rural New York town called Rosebower. Faye has been hired to organize her client's amateur museum. The client, Samuel Langley, has artifacts that he believes prove that aliens from outer space long ago landed in New York and that Scandinavians were the original settlers of the Americas.

In evaluating her client's artifacts, Faye discovers documents that relate to the origins of Spiritualism and to the 1848 women's rights convention in nearby Seneca Falls but nothing to support the client's "aliens from outer space" theories. While the documents are of historical significance and interest, they are not what the client had been hoping for.

Of course, there are malevolent interests at work here also and Faye and Amande find themselves in some peril. Interestingly, Faye's husband, Joe Mantooth, has been left at home this time to take care of their young son, but he does make an appearance late in the book.

Overall, these books adhere to a pretty rigid formula of storytelling, and while they are of some interest and do have sympathetic main characters, I think it's probably time for me to wave goodbye to Faye, Joe, and Amande and move on to other entries on that aforementioned TBR list.  

The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt: A review

Bob Comet is an introvert. He is also a retired librarian who lives a solitary life surrounded by books in his mint-colored house in Portland, Oregon.

Bob goes on a daily walk each morning and on one of those mornings, he encounters a confused elderly woman. He learns that she lives in a nearby senior center and he helps to return her to her home. Bob's life has existed at a bit of loose ends since his retirement and now he sees an opportunity to perhaps fill the void by volunteering at the center.

At the center, he finds a community of his age peers and through his interaction with them, details of his life begin to be revealed. We learn that he had been an unhappy child and that during the final days of World War II, he had run away from home. As a runaway, he had met various characters whom we learn about. Some of them were interesting; others could have been better left out altogether in my opinion.

The story is told in sections and my favorite section involved Bob's wife and best friend. Their backstory was important to understanding Bob and why he was the way he was. He had been hurt by them and that had provided much of the motivation for his actions in later life.  

Bob had wanted to share his love of books with the residents at the senior center. He had hoped to read to them, but he soon learned that the residents really had no interest in being read to by him and so he had to find other ways to perform his volunteer work. The volunteering did give his life a new purpose and he learned that he enjoyed getting to know the residents.

I think I would have liked the book more if it had stuck with the timeline and interactions at the senior center rather than spending so much time in Bob's childhood. Understandably, the writer was interested in exploring the background and providing context for Bob's character but a little of that went a long way for me and I would have preferred to spend more time in his present. All in all, I enjoyed the book quite a bit but felt that I would have enjoyed it more had the focus been tighter on Bob's present rather than his past.

Two reviews

Once again I have fallen behind on my goal of completing a review of every book that I read. It seems that I read faster than I write. In an attempt to close the gap a bit, here are a couple of brief reviews of books that I have recently read.

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Homecoming by Kate Morton

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This historical fiction/mystery thriller is set in Australia and features a journalist named Jess who had lived in London for almost twenty years. In 2019, she finds herself laid off from her job and struggling to make ends meet. In the midst of this financial calamity, she is called home to Sydney because her grandmother who had raised her had suffered a fall and been hospitalized.

Jess arrives at the hospital to find her grandmother confused and looking very frail. Moreover, her grandmother's housekeeper tells her that her grandmother had been confused for weeks and had fallen on the steps to her attic, a place where Jess had always been forbidden to go.

Snooping later in her grandmother's house, Jess finds a true crime book that chronicles the police investigation into the murder of a family named Turner on Christmas Eve, 1959. Furthermore, she finds that the book details a connection between her own family and that infamous crime. What a perfect assignment for an unemployed journalist - investigating an unsolved murder from long ago. Especially one that might in some way involve her own family.

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Old God's Time by Sebastian Barry

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book takes us to Ireland and into the life of recently retired policeman Tom Kettle. Tom is sixty-six years old and has been retired for nine months. He spends his time remembering his life with his wife, daughter, and son who are all now lost to him. Tom is alone and living with his sadness. He is a gentle man who always tries to do what is right. He is a prime example that bad things happen to good people.

Tom is contacted by officers from the police station where he was formerly stationed. They are seeking information from him from long ago that relates to a current case they are working involving child abuse and Catholic priests. This leads Tom to memories of his own past as he struggles to find a way to deal with his life in the present.

This is a story that is full of sadness and it also involves a bit of a mystery from one of Tom's long ago cases. It is in many ways a depressing story but it is beautifully written and although it is a bit of a difficult read, I found it to be ultimately rewarding. 

Reviews

I've been quite negligent about posting reviews of the books that I've read recently, so here's my effort to begin to catch up.

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I find that Elin Hilderbrand's books are generally good for a light summer read and this one certainly falls into that category.

The setting is Nantucket (of course!) and the main character is Hollis Shaw. Hollis has recently lost her husband and as a grieving widow, she is lonely and searching for a focus and purpose for her life. 

Hollis has a summer home on Nantucket and she comes up with the idea of inviting a friend from each decade of her life to spend a weekend with her at that home. Accordingly, she invites Tatum, who was her childhood best friend; Dru-Ann, her best friend from college; Brooke, a friend from when their children were growing up together; and Gigi, who is her favorite internet friend. (Hollis is a blogger and Gigi follows her blog.) Little does Hollis know that she and Gigi share another connection and grief at a loss.

Hollis asks her daughter, Caroline, to interview and film each of the women as they discuss how they know Hollis. Of course, they each have their own problems and concerns and these are revealed through the interviews. The weekend becomes something of a therapy session for each of them.

Overall, I found this to be an enjoyable, non-taxing read. I've read Hilderbrand books before so I knew what to expect and I was not disappointed. If you are looking for a good beach read, here it is!

My rating: 3 of 5 stars  

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Long, long ago in another hot summer not unlike this one, I read the Agatha Christie classic And Then There Were None.  If I wasn't hooked on reading murder mysteries before, that book sealed my fate. I searched out more books like that and especially more Christie books. I think, over time, I finally read all of her books, and some of them, like The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, I read more than once. Apparently, Alice Feeney is a Christie fan as well.

In Daisy Darker, Feeney has written a kind of homage to Christie's And Then There Were None. Feeney's story takes place on a tidal island that is cut off from the rest of the world once the tide rolls in.  At that point, it will be eight long hours until the island reconnects with the mainland.

The title character, Daisy Darker, is the granddaughter of the woman who lives on that tidal island. Nana is turning eighty years old and the family is gathering on the island to help her celebrate. Naturally, all of those family members have their own secrets and concerns, so it is a prickly assembly. 

It's made a bit more prickly by the fact that a storm is gathering which threatens to isolate the island even more. As the storm rages at midnight, Nana's body is discovered. It was not a natural death. In an hour, another family member is found dead. Someone is killing them off, one by one. But who? Is there anyone on the island besides family members?

So, what we have here is the classic locked-room mystery, and kudos to Feeney; she handles it quite well. She's no Christie but then nobody is but hers is a creditable effort.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars 

A Dying Fall by Elly Griffiths: A review

I've been working my way through the series by Elly Griffiths that features forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway. This is number five in the series. 

The plot here is that an old friend of Ruth's has died in a house fire, but before he died he had written to her saying that he had made a ground-breaking archaeological discovery. He didn't explain what the discovery was. Could his discovery have had something to do with his death? And could the discovery have been related, as is hinted, in some way to King Arthur? Ruth, of course, is determined to find the answer to those questions and to find out what that mysterious discovery was. 

She travels to Blackpoll which just happens to be the home territory of DCI Harry Nelson with whom Ruth had had a brief - very brief - fling (Harry is married.) which resulted in her getting pregnant, and that resulted in their daughter Kate. So off she goes with Kate and, of course, Cathbad the druid who is Kate's godfather, in tow. 

Then one of Cathbad's friends, who may have some connection to the mystery, commits suicide. And the plot, as they say, thickens.

I find Ruth to be a very sympathetic character with her worries about her weight and her parenting skills. She is sensitive to how others see her and regard her both personally and professionally. Moreover, she is utterly devoted to her daughter but she has not been able to achieve true harmony in her life. Her relationships with men have been problematic and the one with her current boyfriend is faltering, and, based on what we know of him, that is probably a good thing! 

Archaeology has long been an interest of mine. In fact, at one point in my life, I wanted to be an archaeologist, but in the end, I chose another branch of the social sciences. The fact that Elly Griffiths manages to weave strands of information regarding archaeology and history into her Ruth Galloway plots is one of the strengths of this series and one of the reasons that I greatly enjoy reading her books. There are at last count (I believe) fifteen books in the series so I have at least ten more chances to experience that enjoyment.
 

Mini reviews

What with one thing and another, I have seriously fallen behind on doing reviews of the books that I've read, so, in an attempt to catch up, here are a few mini-reviews. 

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A Room Full of Bones (Ruth Galloway, #4)

by Elly Griffiths

I have been very much enjoying reading Elly Griffiths' series featuring forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway. This one is set in Norfolk where the Smith Museum is preparing to open a coffin containing the bones of a medieval bishop. but when Ruth arrives to supervise, she finds the dead body of the curator Neil Topham beside the coffin. Moreover, it was not a natural death and it seems related to other recent uncanny events in the area. Not to worry though; Even though DCI Harry Nelson has fallen ill (another of those uncanny events), Ruth and her druidic friend Cathbad are on the job!

My rating: 3 stars

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Blue Wolf in Green Fire

by Joseph Heywood

This is another series I'm enjoying reading. It features Upper Michigan Conservation Officer Grady Service and is the second entry in the series. In this one, there are ongoing protests by a group of animal rights activists. The protests appear, at least on the surface, to be related to a double murder at a wolf lab which resulted in the release into the wild of a rare "blue" wolf. Service must defend his hallowed Mosquito Wilderness and the wolves that live there against poachers out to bag that "blue" wolf.

My rating: 3 stars

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Independence Square

by Martin Cruz Smith

I have long loved Smith's series featuring Detective Arkady Renko. This is the tenth in the series and I haven't found a clunker in the bunch. This one is a bit different from the others in that it has an autobiographical factor. We learn that Detective Renko is being diagnosed as having Parkinson's Disease, which in fact the author of the series has. It makes the story particularly personal. Also, there is a current affairs aspect as the story unrolls against the backdrop of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Arkady is determined not to dwell on his illness and he throws himself into work, searching for an anti-Putin activist who has disappeared. The activist, Karina, is the daughter of an acquaintance of his and he meets and falls for Karina's roommate, Elena, a Tatar from Ukraine. Complications abound!

My rating: 3 stars

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Beyond That, the Sea

by Laura Spence-Ash

This one unfolds against the backdrop of World War II. In 1940, a working-class couple in London makes the difficult decision to send their eleven-year-old daughter Beatrix to America for her safety. She will live with a family there for the duration of the war. Bea is scared and angry at being sent away from home but arriving in Boston, she meets her new family, Mr. and Mrs. Gregory, and their sons, William and Gerald and they simply fold her into their world. It is a more affluent world than the one she was used to back in England, but Bea soon becomes fully integrated and the Gregory family becomes more natural to her than her birth family.

My rating: 3 stars

    

The House at Sea's End by Elly Griffiths

I am thoroughly enjoying Elly Griffiths' series featuring forensic archaeologist Dr. Ruth Galloway. My enjoyment is mostly related to the character of Dr. Galloway. She is a single middle-aged woman, the type of character that in many books would be portrayed as waiting and wishing for that special man to come along and complete their life. Not Ruth Galloway! She's much too busy digging up and interpreting the remains of the past. She is living the life she always dreamed of. 

This is the third entry in the series and in it, we find that Ruth has just given birth to her daughter, Kate, and she is struggling with the difficulties of juggling motherhood and work. 

When human bones surface on a remote Norfolk beach, Ruth is called in to investigate. This necessarily brings her back into contact with DCI Harry Nelson, the married father of her daughter. Awkward? To say the least!

The bones turn out to be around seventy years old bringing an association with the World War II era. But meanwhile, Ruth has been brought in to supervise the opening of a coffin that has been excavated near a medieval church. When she arrives on site she finds the museum's curator, Neil Topham, lying dead beside the coffin. And, of course, DCI Nelson is brought in to investigate the case. So Ruth is once again embroiled in a murder case alongside DCI Nelson.

There have been other spooky incidents recently and there is a suspicion that they are the work of a group called the Elginists, the goal of which is to repatriate the museum's extensive collection of Aboriginal skulls. Among the unexpected incidents has been the untimely death of the museum's owner, Lord Smith.

In addition to Ruth and Nelson, all the usual secondary characters are on hand for this one, including the sort of druid, Cathbad. In fact, Cathbad might be my favorite character in the series along with Ruth's cat, Flint. Those two are full of personality and it would be a much duller series without them.  

The Trackers by Charles Frazier: A review

This book is set during the Great Depression of the 1930s. It's not really an era that I prefer reading about, maybe because I grew up with parents who had lived through it and my life was informed by their stories of it. I have somewhat the same prejudice about World War II. It was the defining event of my father's life and I heard about it all during my childhood. But setting my prejudices aside, I had enjoyed Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain, so I decided to give his new book a chance. I'm glad I did. It was an enjoyable read.

It tells the story of a painter, Val Welch, who secures a New Deal assignment to paint a mural in the Dawes, Wyoming post office. The mural is supposed to represent a vision of that region of the world. Val considers himself very lucky to have landed the job when so many are out of work.

He travels west to Dawes prepared to get busy with the project. A wealthy rancher, John Long, and his wife, Eve, have invited Dawes to stay in one of the bunkhouses that serve the cowboys who work for them. He settles in and starts planning his work.

The Longs are the subject of a lot of gossip in the town. John has hopes for a political career. He had served in the army in World War I, but that service seems a bit shady in that he was a sniper. Rather than facing the enemy head-on, he killed while hidden. It's not clear how that will play in the rough tumble of a political campaign.

Moreover, his wife is a bit of a question mark. Before marrying John, she had lived the itinerant life of a singer in a Western swing band and she seems to be loathe to settling down to life as a rancher's wife. In fact, she doesn't settle. One day she absconds taking with her a valuable painting. Her husband hires the mural painter, Val, to go after her, find her, and bring her home.

Val travels across the continent in his search for Eve. Through his eyes, we see the ramshackle settlements that were called Hoovervilles that sprang up around the country. We also experience the nightlife of San Francisco in that era and finally, we travel to the swamps of Florida. 

Charles Frazier has done his research well and he brings all of that to life for us and makes the reader feel the desperation of the period. He does have a knack for writing about ordinary people who are just trying to get through the day and then tomorrow and the next day and the next... 

And that is exactly the story he has given us with The Trackers.

Murder Under a Red Moon by Harini Nagendra: A review

This is the second book in the Bangalore Detectives Club series and the second book by Harini Nagendra that I have read. The books feature newly wed amateur sleuth Kaveri Murthy. The events of this book take place a few weeks after Kaveri has solved her first case and become well-known as a lady detective in 1920s Bangalore.

As the new bride of the local doctor, Kaveri is trying to work out her relationship with her mother-in-law and so when the mother-in-law's cousin, Shanti Sharma, wants to enlist her help in finding out who has been embezzling money from her husband's factory, Kaveri feels she cannot refuse. But when she goes to the factory at the appointed time to meet with Mr. Sharma, she finds him dead. Not only has he been murdered but he is holding a chain belonging to Kaveri in his hands.

Obviously, someone is trying to implicate Kaveri in his murder, but why? And who could it be? Has Shanti rid herself of an unwanted husband and set up Kaveri to take the fall? Or could it be her stepdaughter Chitra who was being forced against her will to get married? And then there is that very suspicious swami who Kaveri believes cannot be trusted. There seems to be no shortage of possible suspects.

Kaveri is Hindu but she has become good friends with the local policeman, a Muslim named Ismail. Nagendra manages to include colorful descriptions of the culture of the region and to explore the differences between Hinduism and Islam which later caused so much conflict. 

She is able to reveal the culture and the differences through her descriptions of the people whom Kaveri enlists in her "posse" which includes such diverse people as a prostitute and a policeman's wife. There are even a couple of street urchins who seem to have appointed themselves as her helpers. 

Kaveri has also assumed the role of teacher to help her women neighbors learn how to read and write. There are, in fact, several subplots playing out here which added interest and complications to the main story. 

In the Bangalore of the 1920s, anti-British sentiment is on the rise, the women's suffrage movement is growing in influence, and a religious leader's sway over his followers continues to expand. It makes for an unpredictable and dangerous atmosphere, but Kaveri is undeterred! Her curiosity and her determination will not let her give up on any mystery until she has solved it. I foresee an interesting future as a detective for her.

Plunder by Mary Anna Evans: A review

This is the seventh book in Mary Anna Evans' Faye Longchamp archaeology mystery series. In this one, archaeologist Faye Longchamp has married Joe Wolf Mantooth and together they have started an archaeology-based consulting business. Their first big job finds them working near the mouth of the Mississippi River, researching archaeological sites that may soon be flooded by oil. This is during the time of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.  

Their lives are now complicated by the fact that they have a son who is a toddler and they must provide for his care while they are working in the field. When their babysitter is injured, their solution to that particular problem is to hire a local teenager, Amande, who lives nearby with her eccentric grandmother. 

Then Amande's grandmother and her uncle are murdered, leaving her with only two other known relatives who are only interested in claiming her small inheritance, and Faye and Joe find themselves as surrogate parents who must protect the young woman from their avarice.

Silver coins that are hundreds of years old have been found in the era, leading to the possibility that there may be a shipwreck hiding under Gulf waters and who knows what riches it might contain. Meanwhile, the police are investigating the murders and Faye and Joe are attempting, in spite of the chaos, to carry on with the job that they have been hired to do. Of course, they do inevitably end up as part of the murder investigation.

Mary Ann Evans does a very good job of developing her characters, both the main characters and the supporting cast, with the result that they appear as fully-formed human beings, not just words on a page. It makes it easier for the reader to feel invested in the action of the novel and in its outcome. Those are important qualities for a cozy mystery series to have and "cozy" very much describes this series. The books are not challenging reads in any sense but they are quite satisfying for a reader who only wants to be entertained. 

River Spirit by Leila Abouela: A review

Set in nineteenth-century Sudan, this novel tells the story of the years that led up to the British conquest of that region in 1898. It explores the tensions that existed between not only Britain and Sudan but also between Christianity and Islam. We experience all of that through the eyes of a girl called Akuany.

Akuany and her brother Bol were orphaned by a raid on their village in South Sudan. Subsequently, a young merchant named Yaseen took them in and promised to care for them until they reached adulthood, but this proved difficult as events in the Ottoman Empire became more and more unsettled. Akuany at first lived with Yaseen's sister but was later enslaved.

A revolutionary leader who proclaimed himself the Mahdi (the prophesied redeemer of Islam) came to power in the region and the people had to choose sides between this "Mahdi" and those who opposed him. Yaseen's choice was to oppose him, even as this choice seemed to tear his family apart.

Akuany, now an adult, is sold and traded from house to house across the countryside, while always maintaining a link to Yaseen. Their relationship evolves over the years and even though the revolution separates them on occasions, they are drawn to each other and manage to remain a part of each other's lives.

The tale is told from various points of view - I must admit that I can't tell you exactly how many - but I found it to be an effective way to present the multiple sides of the story and the impact that it had on different segments of Sudanese society. It truly enriched my reading experience and, I think, gave me a fuller understanding of that period of history and of the sacrifices required of the people, especially the women, caught in that situation. All in all, I felt at least somewhat enlightened about a people and a period of history of which I had been fairly ignorant. What more could one ask of historical fiction? 

Companion Piece by Ali Smith: A review

 

This book follows Ali Smith's Quartet series (Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer) all of which I read, enjoyed, and reviewed here. I enjoyed this one, too, although I find it hard to summarize it or really to explain my enjoyment of it.

It is, at its heart, a play on words - curlew and curfew. The narrator is called Sandy Gray and the time and place is post-Brexit Britain, now ravaged by the pandemic. Her friend Martina Pelf, formerly Martina Inglis, has recently been held for seven and a half hours by border control while she was transporting a centuries-old artifact, the Boothby Lock, for the museum where she works. The border control officer seems especially annoyed by the fact that Martina has dual citizenship. "Is one country not enough for you?" he demands. The novel begins with Martina calling her friend, Sandy, to relay this incident.

The really weird part of the incident was that while Martina was stuck in a room waiting to be released by border control to continue her journey, she heard a mysterious voice saying, "Curlew or curfew, you choose." The statement seems nonsensical on its face. What could it possibly mean?

Days later she continues to ponder the words and to try to find some meaning in them. She feels that she cannot share this with her husband or family. She turns instead to her friend Sandy.

“You were really good at sounding like you knew what a line of poetry meant,” Martina says. “You just knew what things meant.” And Sandy, surprised, and a bit suspicious, does not disappoint. “There’s a choice,” she tells Martina, puzzling it over, immersing herself. “A curlew is a bird, and a curfew is a time of day after which people officially aren’t, by authority, permitted to be out and about.” She goes on, feeling her way in. “And if we think about the proffered choice, curlew or curfew, between nature and an authoritarian shaping of time, which is a human invention. …” Martina stops her, pleased. “You haven’t changed a bit,” she says to Sandy. And Sandy blushes without, she tells us, knowing why.

The book is divided into three parts. The first part is called "You Choose." In it, Sandy confronts a world that is sick not only with Covid but with spreading oppression and injustice. She is an artist but in the malaise of the moment, she begins to question the power of art.

The second part is called "Curlew" and its theme is freedom. It turns out that Martina had disappeared after talking with Sandy, and her children believe the two events are somehow related. They turn up at Sandy's house, a bit like refugees, and although Sandy wants them gone, she can't bear to force them to leave. Her freedom to act has been infringed.

Sandy's father had become ill, apparently with Covid, and had had to be hospitalized. He begins to recover but is still hospitalized and Sandy has taken on the care of his dog, including daily walks. On one of her walks, she meets a girl on a bicycle who recognizes the dog and asks about its owner. This incident is how the book ends.

I admire Ali Smith's command of language and her use of words. It makes reading one of her novels an especially pleasurable experience. And yet, in this instance, I felt that I somehow did not quite "get" the message that the author wanted to deliver. Perhaps if I took the time to read it a second time, it might become clearer. But I have promises to keep and books to read before I sleep. So many books to read before I sleep.

   

The Motion Picture Teller by Colin Cotterill: A review

 

I greatly enjoyed Colin Cotterill's series which was set in Laos and featured Dr. Siri. Dr. Siri is a wonderful character and one can hope that we might see him again at some point. But in the meantime, Cotterill has written this book which is a standalone novel set in Bangkok.

The book's main character is Supot, a postman with the Royal Thai Postal Service. His job is postman but his life is all about appreciation for classic movies. He and his best friend, Ali, who owns a video store, spend every possible moment of their lives watching those movies. They are obsessed with the old Western movies and their stars, especially the female stars.

The two are completely dismissive of modern Thai cinema and spend plenty of their time denigrating it. But then something happens to radically change their views.

A cassette with the title Bangkok 2010 is delivered to Ali's store. They have no idea where it came from or why it was sent to Ali, but after watching it, the two friends agree that it is the most brilliant Thai film they have ever seen.

It is a dystopian film set in Thailand. In the film, the country is run by chauvinistic Security Council officers. The female star of the movie is named Siriluk and she is everything that Ali and Supot could dream of in a woman.

But the film comes with a mystery. The mystery is that nobody has ever heard of it or of any of the people associated with the film. Why would anyone make such a brilliant film and then not release it and why has no one ever heard of any of the actors, the director, or any of the crew?

Supot is determined to solve the mystery of the film. His first step is to write to Siriluk. She responds at first but only to ask him not to show the film to anybody. But as he continues writing to her, she stops responding. Supot, however, follows his obsession by traveling deep into the Thai countryside looking for answers. And he finds that there is a curse on the movie. Will it ever be able to be shown to the public?

Colin Cotterill writes with a light touch. All of his books are notable for their frequent uses of humor to make a point. Supot is a lovable character in the same mold as Dr. Siri and I suspect we may see more of him in the future, even though this book is billed as a "standalone." That would be okay with me. I quite enjoyed the character and the book.    

Exiles by Jane Harper: A review

 Exiles is an atmospheric mystery set in the wine country in the south of Australia. We find investigator Aaron Falk there as he attends the christening of the son of his friend, Greg Raco. Aaron has been asked to be his godfather, so he is there in a completely civilian and social capacity, not as a financial federal investigator.

However, there is a mystery here to be investigated. A year previously, a young mother had gone missing from the area, leaving her baby in a stroller in the parking lot at the annual wine festival. She has not been seen since and the mystery of her disappearance still troubles the community.

The mother had been married to Greg Raco's brother Charlie and voluntarily leaving her baby behind would have been completely anomalous behavior for her. The family asks their friend Aaron to look into the case further for them and try to find out what has happened to the missing mother.

This is a complicated mystery with multiple layers and it develops slowly, flowing between past and present timelines. Jane Harper takes great care in describing the personalities of the characters and the geography of the area in which the action takes place. Her descriptions of the vineyards and of the sunrises and sunsets there are quite vivid and memorable. I imagine it as a really beautiful place. 

Aaron Falk is an interesting character and in Exiles we see him torn between different possible career paths. Is there a career change in the offing for him? Guess we'll have to read the next installment to find out.

The Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor: A review

This is the first in a proposed trilogy of books, set in India, mostly in Delhi. It is centered around the Wadia family, but we see things mostly through the eyes of Ajay who works for Sonny, the scion of that family. 

When he was a young boy, Ajay was sold by his impoverished mother. It was under those circumstances that the boy grew up and eventually came to work for Sonny. 

The Wadia family essentially rules Delhi. Nothing can get done there without their consent. This creates an atmosphere that is rife with all manner of vice, including gangsters, kidnappers, murderers, drug addicts, and violent thugs of every stripe.

The story is a blend of family saga and crime drama and the writer takes her time in telling it. The book is over 500 pages long and yet it reads quickly. The action never drags and the reader feels compelled to keep turning those pages to find out what will happen next.

The book begins with a tragedy, a fatal car crash that killed five people including a pregnant woman. The driver of the car causing the crash - a Mercedes - was apparently drunk, but the investigation makes Ajay, the servant, the driver, and he is arrested and imprisoned.

We also meet Neda who is Sonny's girlfriend. She is a somewhat naive young journalist who seems to have little commitment to her profession. Instead, she just wants to be a part of the glamorous, hedonistic world represented by Sonny. 

Ajay, Sonny, and Neda - these are the three characters who give us this story. Ajay and Neda live in Sonny's wake and they put their trust in him, but he is not worthy of that trust.  

It was never entirely clear to me just what it was that made the Wadia family so bad. The family relationships and their actions are all left a bit shadowy. The vagueness was perhaps intentional on the part of the writer, but personally, I would have appreciated just a bit more exposition. One likes to know just what it is that makes this unlikable character so unlikable. But perhaps we will get more of that in the second and third entries of the series, which I definitely plan to read.

The Rock Hole by Reavis Z. Wortham: A review

I had read a couple of the later entries in this series and decided that perhaps I should go back to the beginning. This book was the first in the Red River mysteries series.

The events of the book take place in 1964 in East Texas, a time and place when racial tensions were a prominent part of everyday life. We meet Constable Ned Parker who is White and a Black deputy sheriff named John Washington. The two work together to deliver justice and to protect their community from evil.

In this case, this evil is exemplified by an individual who takes pleasure in torturing and killing animals. Of course, he doesn't stop there. He soon moves on to humans and the killer seems to be targeting the constable's family which includes his ten-year-old grandson Top who is now living with him after the death of his parents in a car crash. The story of the investigation is told mostly through the perspective of Top and his slightly older cousin, Pepper.

This is very different from the kinds of cases which the constable normally handles. He's used to dealing with drunks and moonshiners and the occasional domestic disturbance. This is an entirely different level of evil.

Woven in among the pursuit of the evil-doer is the story of the coming-of-age of Top and Pepper. Thus we get the contrast of their sweet innocence with the pure wickedness of which humans are capable.

Perhaps the strongest part of the story for me was the author's description of the setting. I'm pretty familiar with small East Texas towns and I found his descriptions of the culture of those places to be spot on. Moreover, the characters as he described them fit right into that setting. It's a community that is replete with small-town Western values, where everyone knows everyone and neighbors will look out for their neighbors. While the writer does tend to somewhat gloss over the racial tensions of that era, I think he gets the overall atmosphere pretty much right. And his characters are people that the reader can identify with and care about. This was a good start for the series and it left me wanting to read more about these people.

Trust by Hernan Diaz: A review

I finished reading this book a few days ago and, at the time, gave it a three-star rating. But when I sat down at my keyboard tonight to try to review it, I found I was completely blank. I couldn't remember the book. Maybe that three-star rating was a bit generous??? 

In the end, I had to refer to the Goodreads synopsis of the book to jog my memory and to try to recall why I had awarded it three stars. Not a very auspicious beginning for a book review.

I think the problem may have been not so much the book or the writing but simply that I was distracted by other things while I was reading. Sometimes a book can take one out of his/her distraction and focus attention but that proved to be difficult for me in this instance.

Anyway, bearing that caveat in mind, these are my best recollections of and reactions to Hernan Diaz's book.

The book is set primarily in the Roaring '20s in New York with some side trips to Europe. It is the story of a prominent financier Benjamin Rask and his wife Helen. Benjamin is a legend on Wall Street and Helen is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. They seem to possess unlimited wealth and as such, are prime targets of envy and gossip. 

The book is divided into four parts. The first part is a novel within the novel by an author named Harold Vanner. The second is a short memoir by a financier named Andrew Bevel. In the third, a woman named Ida Partenza tells of her time working with Andrew Bevel to compile his memoirs. And, finally, the fourth section comprises journal entries for Mildred Bevel, the wife of Andrew. The plot centers on the world of finance in the late 1800s and up to about the mid-twentieth century. 

I think my main problem with the book was that I just couldn't get into that novel within the novel and I couldn't really make any connection to any of the characters. I couldn't really make myself care much about what happened to any of them. The shifting relationships and the slow reveal of the multiple layers of the story just left me somewhat confused and not really willing to make the effort to sort it all out. So, yes, maybe three stars were a bit generous, but it was my initial reaction and I'll let it stand.