The Helsinki Affair by Anna Pitoniak: A review

Okay, let me be honest here: It has been close to a month since I finished reading this book and so much has passed through my brain since then that I am struggling to remember the plot and characters. But at the time that I finished it, I gave it four stars so I know that I enjoyed it!

It's a spy novel as you might guess from the title and the cover. It features a CIA agent named Amanda Cole who is following in the footsteps of her father who was also a CIA agent. When we first meet her she is stationed in Rome and is pretty much bored out of her skull. Nothing's happening there to interest a CIA agent. Then, through the doors of the embassy walks a low-level Russian operative who is desperate to warn the Americans that a U.S. senator on a trip to Cairo is about to be assassinated.

Unfortunately, Amanda's superiors do not believe the Russian. They decide to take no action. But Amanda does believe him and so does a brash legendary spy named Kath. Amanda and Kath team up to try to get to the bottom of things.

They discover a complicated case involving foreign oligarchs, double agents, blackmailed CEOs, and illegal arms transfers. But most important to Amanda, she finds her deceased father's name in the notes that the senator had written before his death. What is the meaning of that?

There was quite a lot for me to like about this book, including the fact that it featured two really strong female characters. Moreover, the plot was a good one and the intersecting of the past and present timelines, on the whole, was handled well, I thought.

On the other hand, sometimes the plot bordered on the unbelievable, and the timelines jumped around unexpectedly, even within the same chapter. But when I'm enjoying a story, these trivialities don't bother me so much. And I did enjoy this one and would recommend it to anyone who, like me, enjoys spy novels.

Holly by Stephen King: A review

 

Stephen King is a very good writer but his preferred genre, horror, is something I tend to steer clear of in my reading. There seems to be more than enough horror in the real world, so why inflict it on myself in my reading life. I think the only book of his that I'd ever actually read was Billy Summers which was notable for its lack of horror. But I kept reading so many intriguing reviews and comments about his new book that I decided to give it a go. And I found plenty of horror but still...

The book features a character who has appeared in the background in other King novels, Holly Gibney. In this one, she is front and center as the title of the book would indicate.

Holly is a partner in a detective agency called Finders Keepers. Her life is a bit complicated at the moment by the facts that her mother has just died and her partner, Pete, is currently suffering from Covid. So Finders Keepers is a bit strapped for working detectives at the moment, but when the agency receives a call from Penny Dahl, a desperate mother who has been unable to contact her daughter, Bonnie, something in the woman's voice makes it impossible for Holly to turn her down. 

Her search for Bonnie brings her in contact with a pair of professors at the local college. Professors Rodney and Emily Harris are octogenarians and are semi-retired. They appear to be the most benign and harmless academics, but appearances can be deceiving. And they were never more deceptive than in this case. Rodney and Emily are (not to put too fine a point on it) cannibals. Their basement harbors a cage where they keep their "livestock" before slaughtering and eating them. 

Holly is off her guard in the presence of the professors, not considering them any kind of threat. That is her big mistake and is how she ends up in that cage in the basement. (Spoiler alert!) She is not slaughtered and eaten and lives to inhabit what I understand will be a series of Stephen King books in which she will evidently be the main character.

And she is a great character. She is resourceful and quick-witted and utterly devoted to her profession. I look forward to reading her further adventures, so, quick, Mr. King, get busy on that next book! 

The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith: A review

This is the seventh entry in Robert Galbraith's (a.k.a, J.K. Rowling's) Cormoran Strike series. It has evolved into the Cormoran Strike/Robin Ellacott series as the two are now partners in the detective agency. In this entry, it is primarily Robin's story as she goes undercover to try to find out more about a dangerous cult. 

That cult is the Universal Humanitarian Church, a religious cult operating in the Norfolk countryside. The cult has attracted a young man named Will who has become completely enthralled and committed to its activities. Will's father engages the detective agency to find out what is going on and try to extract his son.

On the surface, the UHC appears to be a benevolent organization doing charity work among the poor, but when the detectives dig below the surface, a different picture emerges. That picture is a lot darker and more sinister with a series of unnatural and unexplained deaths.

So Robin infiltrates and becomes a part of the cult to find evidence of what's happening while Strike monitors as best he can from the outside.

And what about Robin and Strike's personal relationship? Well, that continues to evolve as well. Not to put too fine a point on it, they are in love with each other but neither admits it to the other. They barely admit it to themselves. Robin has continued her relationship with Murphy, the police detective, but that isn't going very well. Murphy is extremely jealous and possessive. Strike, meanwhile, is still involved with Charlotte but that relationship comes to a sudden and definitive end in this book so we'll have to see where he goes, romantically speaking, in the future. 

Galbraith seems to be building toward something here but it's hard to say just what. How would a romantic relationship affect the partners' working relationship? Would they be able to sustain a romantic/working relationship? Perhaps Galbraith is pondering that question as well as she plans entry number eight in this series. I look forward to seeing how she answers the question. I'm sure it will make for interesting reading!   

North Woods by Daniel Mason: A review

I finished reading this book almost three weeks ago and more books have been read and passed through my brain since then so I had to refer to the Goodreads synopsis of the book to refresh my memory of just what I read. I noted that at the time I finished it, I rated it with four stars, so in fact, I did enjoy it. 

The book tells the story of a house in the north woods of the title and of the people who inhabited it through many decades. The woods are located in western Massachusetts and the first inhabitants are a Pilgrim couple who had fled the rigid strictures of their society. The novel then proceeds through twelve interlinked stories of that first couple and all the residents that followed.

Those residents include an English soldier who abandons the battlefield to raise apples; a pair of spinster twins; a crime reporter; a lovelorn painter; a conman; and yes, even that panther that appears on the cover. Their stories were a bit uneven in my estimation. I enjoyed some more than others. My favorites were probably the spinster twins and the painter, as well as the apple-raiser.

Daniel Mason's descriptions of Nature were really my favorite parts of the book. I loved how he explored the changes that came to the woods as the climate changed and pine trees began to replace some of the native hardwoods. He also has a talent for making the case for how we are connected to our environment and to one another. Moreover, those connections exist through time, space, and language and are undeniable and unbreakable.

The book reminded me in some ways of Richard Powers' The Overstory and that is high praise from me. I hope Mason will produce more works in this vein. I'd certainly be there to read them!

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

*~*~*~*

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 Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff: A review

Lauren Groff's latest gives us the story of a young servant girl who journeys with her mistress and the mistress's second husband from England to America in the 17th century. The girl's name is a bit of a mystery. She is sometimes referred to as Lamentations and sometimes called Zed. She just refers to herself as Girl.

On the trip from England, the girl meets and learns to care for a Dutch glassblower who is gentle and kind but she becomes separated from him and has only his memory to comfort her in her perilous life.

The girl's duties mostly involve caring for her mistress's severely disabled daughter, Bess. They arrive in Jamestown, Virginia, and we see them there in the extremely harsh winter of 1610. It is a time of starvation and sickness with people dying all around them. This teenage orphan servant girl makes the momentous decision to flee into the wilds.

She gathers the few items that she can and runs away. She has only her innate instincts to guide her, but her plan is to try to reach French-controlled territory and find a fur trader who will marry her and take her to France. So she heads north, hoping to reach Canada. "If I stop I will die," she tells herself, and she pushes on almost beyond endurance.

She has distant sightings of Powhatan and Piscataway people but doesn't risk approaching them. She sees monstrous bears and manages to stay out of their way. She also manages to elude a sadistic and insane Jesuit priest who haunts her passage through the land. 

Finding enough food is always a problem. She is always hungry and to stave off her hunger pains she eats grubs, mud, and whatever she can lay her hands on. 

Though completely uneducated, she is a clever and ingenious girl and she does have a lot of knowledge of the natural world which stands her in good stead on her journey. Every day is a challenge just to stay alive and she must call upon every bit of knowledge and instinct she has to meet that challenge.

This was a hard one for me to read because I identified strongly with the girl in her struggles. I felt her pain and her terror in her fight to make it through one more day. Lauren Groff has managed to deliver us a visceral reading experience about the strength of the human spirit and the will to survive. This is her fifth novel. I think she has the hang of it now.

 

Be Mine by Richard Ford: A review

Here's Frank Bascombe come to take us on a road trip once again. Since his creator, Richard Ford, first introduced him to us almost forty years ago, Frank has taken us on several holiday trips, most notably in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Independence Day.

Once again, Frank is taking a road trip with his son Paul who is now 47 and suffering from ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease). Frank and Paul refer to it as Al's, like some neighborhood bar. Frank is in his 70s and dealing with all the problems that come with an aging body, while also trying to serve as caretaker to his son.

So, how exactly is Frank accomplishing that? Well, his latest idea is to hit the road with Paul and take him to Mount Rushmore on a Valentine's Day trip. Paul has been in an experimental protocol for treating ALS at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Frank collects him and they head west. 

The topics of conversation between the two men while traveling range from observations about the midwestern landscape they are traversing to matters of life and death itself. Frank's health has been problematic as well. He's recovered from prostate cancer and now he just wants to be happy "before the gray curtain comes down." 

There's a certain desperation to Frank's personality that has been less noticeable (at least to me) in the previous four books in this series. As his body grows older, weaker, and more uncomfortable to live in, he senses that time is running out for him as well as for his son. It's an awareness that many of us, especially those of us of a certain age, can easily relate to. I think Richard Ford, who was born in Jackson, Mississippi in 1944, may perceive that awareness quite personally, too, and perhaps that is why he is able to write about it so feelingly.

Previous reviews in this series:

The Sportswriter

Independence Day

The Lay of the Land

Let Me Be Frank With You

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray: A review

This book has been highly acclaimed by just about everyone who has reviewed it and now it has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, so obviously it must have a lot that's good going for it. So why did it leave me dissatisfied? 

The Bee Sting is the story of the Barnes family, a family that is in trouble and struggling to maintain its station in life as the husband/father's car business hits the skids and he seems incapable of doing anything to save it. Instead, he spends his time out in the woods preparing for the actual end of the world while his wife, Imelda, sells off her jewelry on eBay.

Meanwhile, their teenage daughter, Cass, who has always been a top student in her class, has started drinking as a way of coping with the situation at home, and twelve-year-old PJ is obsessed with video game forums. On one of those forums, he has met someone named Ethan who is encouraging him to run away from home.

So, we have a family about to fly apart and the question is, "Can this family be saved?" And, perhaps, should it be?

Paul Murray is a very good writer and this is a well-written book, but I think it could have benefitted from a stricter editor. The Kindle version of the book, which is what I read, is 736 pages long! It could have been a hundred pages - maybe even 200 pages - shorter and still told the story and, in my opinion, it would have been a better book. 

I did enjoy the book even in its great length and I really have no criticism of it other than the fact that it is just too long. While reading it, I frequently had the urge to say to the writer, "Just get on with it!" That, I think, is not the reaction the writer was going for. 
 

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride: A review

I have previously read two of James McBride's novels: The Good Lord Bird and Deacon King Kong both in 2020. They were both five-star reads for me. I can't say that I enjoyed his latest, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, quite as much; nevertheless, it was an enjoyable read and I don't regret any of the time I spent with it.

The setting of this story is Chicken Hill, a run-down neighborhood in Pottsdown, Pennsylvania. It alternates between two time frames: the 1930s and the 1970s. In both decades, Chicken Hill is a neighborhood of African Americans and immigrant Jews living side by side and sharing life's ambitions and sorrows. 

The action kicks off when workers discover a skeleton at the bottom of an old well. In the hands of a different writer, this might be the beginning of a horror story or a tragedy but with James McBride as our tour guide, it becomes a somewhat Dickensian tragi-comic tale of larger-than-life characters. These characters are eccentric, memorable, and altogether sympathetic.  

One main character is Moshe Ludlow, a striving impresario from Romania, who owns the All-American Dance Hall and Theater and comes up with the novel idea that he should open his dance hall to the Black residents. His wife Chona is a polio survivor with a pronounced limp and is a conscience of the community. 

But in addition to Moshe and Chona, there is a whole list of characters with interesting names like Fatty, Big Soap, Monkey Pants, and Dodo and each one of them has his story to tell. 

Dodo's story is that he is a young Black boy who is unable to hear or speak. When a local doctor who is a member of the KKK comes looking for the boy to send him to a state institution, Chona and her friends band together to keep him hidden.

One's overwhelming impression of these people and their intertwined stories is of their goodness and kindness. This is a gentle story of a community of poor and middle-class people rubbing along together and doing their best with what they have and doing it with integrity and benevolence.  

I find it difficult to even begin to adequately sum up this story. Suffice it to say that if you are looking for a tale that combines comedy and tragedy and tells it all with phenomenal heart, this may well be the book you are looking for!  

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 Ink Black Heart by Robert Galbraith: A review

Let me get my main complaint about this book off my chest up front: The book is quite long and the reason it's so long is that it spends so many pages transcribing online chat transcripts. I don't need that! Just describe and summarize for me, please.

As for the story itself, it was engrossing. Robert Galbraith, aka J.K. Rowling, is quite adept at coming up with good ideas for a novel, developing a storyline, and peopling it with interesting characters. 

The story here involves a popular cartoon called "The Ink Black Heart." One of the co-creators of that cartoon, Edie Ledwell, turns up at the offices of detectives Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott where she meets Robin and begs for her help in identifying a mysterious online figure who calls himself (herself?) Anomie. 

Anomie has been persecuting Edie and making her life miserable. Robin, however, does not think the agency, which has a full load of cases, can help in this particular instance and she turns Edie down.

A few days later, Robin reads the news that Edie and the co-creator of the series have been attacked in Highgate Cemetery, the location where the cartoon is set. Edie had been tasered and then murdered. Consequently, Robin and Cormoran feel compelled to investigate and discover Anomie's true identity and whether it is related to Edie's murder.

There are a lot of characters in this book and a lot of extraneous plotlines that don't seem to lead anywhere. The plot is stinking with red herrings but I guess if you are the editor of a book by a fabulously successful author like Galbraith/Rowling you are very hesitant about second-guessing her and suggesting eliminating or shortening passages or removing characters. And, truthfully, once I got into the story, I could hardly bear to put it down, so perhaps the writer and her editors knew what they were doing.

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.

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett: A review

Ann Patchett's latest book, Tom Lake, is set during the current pandemic and the action takes place in a cherry orchard in Michigan. Similarities to Chekhov's play, The Cherry Orchard, are most definitely intentional.

The story concerns former actress Lara Kenison and her husband Joe Nelson and their three grown-up daughters, Emily, Nell, and Maisie. The pandemic has brought all of the family together on the farm to shelter in place. Because of the pandemic, Joe has not been able to bring in the migrant workers who normally help to gather the cherries and so the family works to try to take up the slack and get the crop in.

As they work, the daughters press their mother to entertain them by telling them of the time when she worked in a summer theater production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town in Tom Lake, Michigan. Also in the cast was an actor named Peter Duke who was an unknown at the time but later became quite famous. During their time in the play, Lara had a brief romance with Duke. 

Lara's story of that time is interspersed between present-day events of the family's life and their work in the orchard. The family's interactions also reveal more about the three daughters and their own aspirations for their lives. Emily, the oldest of the daughters, plans to take over running the farm in the future. The middle daughter, Maisie, is studying to be a veterinarian. The youngest, Nell, wants to be an actress.

Tom Lake is Lara's first-person perspective and as such we are privy to her memories and her thoughts about them. We also share her private deliberations on just how much of her past to tell her daughters about. 

This is a character-driven narrative and each of the family member's characters is fully developed. It is a slow-paced story and is very much attuned to the times in which we live. Patchett seems intent on getting us to slow down and think about things, to think about what we are reading and how these pandemic times will continue to play out in our lives.

All in all, I found this to be a very satisfying and affecting story. I liked the Kenison-Nelson family quite a lot. It was hard to put the book down and I was sad to see it end. 

 

Bad Optics by Joseph Heywood: A review

This is the eleventh book in this series set in Michigan and featuring Conservation Officer Grady Service. I haven't read all of them, but I have read and enjoyed several.

This one finds Service at loose ends, having been suspended from his job. His crime had been teaming up with a rather notorious lawbreaker (poacher Limpy Allerdyce) in order to stop poachers and other violators of the deer hunting laws. But Service is incapable of just sitting around and so he continues patrolling his territory, the Mosquito Wilderness Area, voluntarily and unofficially.

Grady resents what he feels is the unfairness of his suspension and he begins to suspect that there is something rotten in Lansing that may be behind it all. He is a stubborn man and he is determined to get to the bottom of what he sees as political shenanigans. 

Once again he enlists the aid of Limpy and his fellow Vietnam vet and game warden Luticious Treebone. (You have to love these names!) Their investigation determines that someone is trying to illegally commercialize the Mosquito and Grady realizes that the wilderness he loves and protects could be destroyed if he doesn't stop them.

These are quirky and memorable characters and they are a lot of fun to read about. There's nothing particularly deep or complicated about the story. It is generally well-written but doesn't tax the brain so I would characterize it as a good read for a hot summer day. 
 

Thus Was Adonis Murdered by Sarah Caudwell: A review

I've made it a practice in recent years to write reviews of all the books that I read and post them on Goodreads and here on my blog. It's a way of firmly impressing the book into my memory and I get quite a bit of enjoyment out of doing it and of reading your comments when they come. 

So, I sat down to do my review of Sarah Caudwell's Thus Was Adonis Murdered and found that my memory of the book, which I finished more than a week ago, was blank. Was that a fault of the book or of my memory? Both, perhaps? I saw that I had given the book a two-star rating which I very rarely do, so obviously it had not made a great impression on me. Still... 

In the end, I resorted to reading the synopsis and some of the reviews on Goodreads to jog my memory. Here, then, are my (restored) impressions of the book.

The book is set in Venice and in England and the main characters are a young barrister named Julia Larwood and Professor Hilary Tamar, an esteemed Oxford don. 

Julia had saved her money to take a trip to Venice as part of a tour group. The whole thing turns into a nightmare when a member of the group is murdered and Julia is accused of the murder. The book consists of Julia's letters home to Hilary and the group of barristers in her practice who take the information that she provides and analyze the clues in order to identify the real culprit.

That, in a nutshell, is the plot of the book.

This was the first in a series of four books that featured Professor Hilary Tamar. As such, it was not a bad introduction to the character. Caudwell did a good job, I thought, of developing the personality of Tamar. He comes across as one who enjoys gossip and good food and drink, preferably in a trifecta combination. He would be an entertaining dinner companion. I think I might enjoy spending more time with him.

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.
 

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.