Sacred and Profane by Faye Kellerman

I'm not sure I remembered much about the first book, except that I learned about the mikvah. I didn't remember this one at all. The fact that I knew that Decker's teen hooker informant was wearing a red shirt can't count, because it was inevitable. Did that expression really enter the vernacular from Star Trek? I'll have to look that up. (Yep, it did - the sports usage is apparently completely unconnected.)

The crime here is significantly gruesome, I am tempted to compare it to Elizabeth George for the convoluted horror of it all. In this one, though, the horror is compounded by the fact that Rina's son discovers the first bodies while on an outing with Decker. Their relationship spirals out of control, although not directly as a result of the boys' trauma, and the book ends with Rina leaving LA and going to New York, not so much to be near her dead husband's family as to get some actual distance between the two of them. At least Kellerman doesn't leave us completely hanging - it is quite clear that they will get it together eventually.

The venue of the crime is the lowest and most horrifying level of the pornography business. And the part that I could almost rubber stamp into my discussions of mystery stories - greed and arrogance.

And the title. The text arises from Decker's study of the Torah, and is tied to his struggle with the idea of becoming what these books refer to as a "Torah Jew." Apparently, this is not connected with the super-orthodox, but more with what might be called "fundamentalism" - although I am sure that the oblique association with self-styled "fundamentalist" Christians is sure to offend everyone. It is not the same, at all - but the word in direct interpretation seems to apply. As I understand the tenets of the system to which Rina and the venerable Rav Shulman subscribe, they strive to live as directed by the Torah - completely. On the other side of the wall, so-called fundamentalist Christians (I seem to be incapable of writing that phrase without a qualifier), rather than studying and striving to live by scripture, have interpreted scripture to suit their own prejudices and want to dictate belief and behavior to everyone else. To finish offending everyone, it seems that Torah Jews, according to Kellerman, try to actually do what the "Christian Right" claims to do.

If someone burns a cross in my yard, I suppose I will know that someone actually reads this.

Once Upon a Town by Bob Greene

Someone handed me a copy of this book several years ago, but somehow I never got around to reading it. But this month's hostess for our book club made it her selection. Now, I wish I could find the original paperback copy because I am sure there are pictures and the Kindle version doesn't include them.

It is a thoroughly nice book about an amazing event. The women of the little town of North Platte, Nebraska, gathered at the train station on Christmas day in 1941, to meet the troop train that was carrying the battalion of Nebraska recruits from boot camp to the coast to be shipped out. When the train pulled in, the boys on the train were not the Nebraska troops, but the ladies and girls stepped up and distributed the food and smiles anyway. The connection was made - it didn't have to be local boys - all those boys were their own boys.

Those ladies and a battalion of others met and fed the boys on every troop train that stopped in North Platte (and they all stopped for water) until most of the troops had returned home. War Department estimates put the number at over six million men in uniform who were greeted and fed at the North Platte Canteen. Fed by small town and farm people who used their own ration coupons for sugar to bake cakes and cookies and fried up entire flocks of chickens from their hen houses, who boiled and peeled thousands of eggs and baked endless loaves of bread for sandwiches. Fed by women who had lost their own sons to the war. Fed by people who drove in fifty or sixty miles to take a turn at staffing the Canteen - again using their limited personal rations of gas and knowing that tires could not be replaced. Every bit of the time and effort volunteered and every bite of food donated or paid for by cash donations.

In combat, chewing on tasteless field rations, soldiers from all over the country would remember those sandwiches and fried chicken and maybe get a small sense of who and what they were fighting for.

Greene interviews the girls and women who greeted the soldiers and danced with them during their 10 to 20 minutes in North Platte and, all over the country, the men who at the time of writing were in their seventies and eighties and remembered with tears the kindness they met there.

The story almost seems to be about the essence of what we in the United States like to think we are - and maybe for "one brief shining moment" were.

The Heralds of Valdemar by Mercedes Lackey

Yes, all three volumes, but this time on my Kindle - now they should be handy the next time I want to reread them.

Now, having reread something that I know I can depend on, I can get back out there and try something new - or something that I haven't read in a very long time. I also have the next book club book to read.

I'm not going to bother to review these, after all, I think I have read them twice since I have been keeping this blog. I will pick up the first one sometimes and promise myself that I only want to read the first part - and then running through the whole series. I think I can put off a reread of the Liaden stories for a while - until I really need a comfort treatment again.

Chopping Spree by Diane Mott Davidson

Somehow this one just wasn't quite as much fun as these usually are. It could just be that I am tired and feeling grumpier than usual, or it could have been the background line of Goldy's son as a greedy, obnoxious, generally hateful teenager. I think it is about time for the rotten spoiled brat to shape up and start turning into a human being.

It is also about time for the little stinker to wise up about his abusive father, but that is another issue. Goldy's ex did not figure in this one significantly, for which I am grateful. Of course, there were several other abusive spouses to take up the slack. (I really am grumpy today!)

This one really is all about greed and its twin, acquisitiveness. We even have a scene at a Shopper's Anonymous twelve step meeting. All round depressing subject. And it didn't feel to me like an "honest" mystery with enough clues to make the ending feel plausible.

This is three in a row that I didn't really care for - I may have to go back and read something that I know I like.

The Magicians by Lev Grossman

How depressing. I finished this days ago and found it such a downer that I haven't even been able to bring myself to write it up.

The premise is great, high school age kids with "talent" are screened for admission to what is basically Brakebill's College of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Okay, so it's derivative - complete with a crazy magic sport called welters to fill the slot occupied by quidditch in the original. Still, I liked the way that students were recruited and tested; it definitely had potential.

Grossman goes on, though, apparently not having an original thought to his name, to create a full clone of Narnia, a Narnia which has fallen on evil times and must be rescued. Sound familiar?

Everything is much less pleasant than either of the originals, and has far less significance when compared to the subtext of Narnia. Our hero(?) returns to the mundane world and takes up a job in the tradition of graduates of Brakebill - that is, sitting in an office doing nothing and receiving a large salary for it. In the end, the other adventurers who survived the trip to Fillory (the Narnia clone) come back and beg him to join them in sitting on the four thrones of Fillory (again, sound familiar?). And to cap it all, to my mind, it ends ambiguously. Did he join them or did he step out of his umpteenth floor window to commit suicide? And, you know what? I don't really care.

Labyrinth by Kate Mosse

Well, I think this is one of those "if you like that sort of thing" books. I don't have any deep objection to them, but this one dragged on a bit. We have parallel stories, one in the twelfth century and the other with the reincarnations of all the characters in the 21st century except one who had actually been alive for 900 years.

It is also a holy grail story with echoes from Indiana Jones and The DaVinci Code. And what is it with the twelfth century? I guess it is simply coincidence that I have been running into so many of them lately. There are the Sharan Newman stories, of course, and the Kathy Reichs book - although that one was first century, not twelfth - and none of the story was set there. Something else I've read recently took me into that century - but I can't think what it was - and I can't find it in this log - oh, well.

I have another one of hers on my shelf, but I don't think I'm going to be in any hurry to get to it. I didn't actively dislike it, but I have too much to do this year to spend the time I steal from school work on stuff that is just ok.

Cross Bones by Kathy Reichs

This one is something of a departure for Reichs. In these e-editions of her books there is generally a statement from her at the end mentioning how her own work and the cases that cross her autopsy table have suggested the plot of the preceding story. This one, while there are a couple of murders and a lot of general mayhem, not to mention a high speed chase through the streets of Jerusalem, is really an archaeological mystery with questions which address the fundamental assumptions of Christianity.

What if the bones of a crucified man found in the tomb really were those of the man Jesus of Nazareth? We can all relax, the bones which begged that particular question were destroyed in an accident, and the motivations all round were the usual greed, betrayal, and revenge rather than the speculative conspiracies involving members of any one of the world's three great religions, all of which claim their origins in that same contested piece of desert.

I don't know if I've mentioned how much I enjoy Reichs' throw-aways of lines from classic rock and roll songs. Most of them are completely apropos. As Tempe and her friend, archaeologist Jake, are huddled in a tomb on a rocky hillside, trapped by radical conservatives, who violently oppose the disturbance of Israel's sacred dead, stoning them when they show themselves and a starving jackal in the lower cavern, one of them says to the other, "We've got to get out of this place" and the other responds "If it's the last thing we ever do." Gotta love it. I can almost visualize them breaking into a musical comedy-style song and dance number.

By the way, in case you were wondering, Ryan does go to Israel, too. In fact, he persuades Tempe to go. And a good time is had by all - in between stonings, and shootings, and trashing of hotel rooms, and aforementioned high speed chases.

Sticks and Scones by Diane Mott Davidson

I actually finished this one last night while I waited for my dilatory classmates to post to the message board that closed at midnight. The last time, I gave up and went to bed at 11:30 and in the morning there had been eleven additional messages. Some of them were initial posts, not responses - I know because this time there were a few names that I had never seen before. And this instructor not only closes, but takes down the message board so that we can no longer read it. At any rate, by the time I was ready to pack it in, I was too cranky to write the book up.

As always, a good time, someone shoots out their window while Tom is out of town and Goldy and Arch relocate to the medieval castle belonging to her current client, a serious Anglophile - hence scones. The "sticks and" part shows up in a serious mother/son chat between Goldy and Arch about some recent events. Tom barely makes it back into the neighborhood before someone gets in a near-fatal shot at him and he spends the rest of the time recuperating at the castle as well.

The Jerk is out on parole after serving only a small fraction of his sentence for beating his previous girlfriend, and this time the user is used as he is set up by the criminals. A truly delightful turn of events which is gleefully reported by Marla, who actually scarcely appears in this story. In each book, I keep thinking that Davidson will finally kill him off, but I suppose I would prefer that before she does that, Arch sees the light.

I am beginning to wish that I had looked at time frame in these. I suppose it wouldn't be impossible to go back an review that part of them - and for the other series that I am rereading. At present reading, it seems like it is always winter in Colorado. Granted, a medieval castle is a lot creepier in the cold of winter than on a bright sunny summer day.

This one is loaded with investigative dead ends and motivational twists. The usual pattern for many series mysteries is two investigations which turn out to be the same one. Here we have two lines which appear to be related but turn out not to be. An interesting change.

On the family front, Arch is being an irritating teenager and maintains his fanatic loyalty to his violent, abusive father. Julian has transferred to a college in Colorado and his professors never seem to mind when he runs down to Aspen Meadows for weeks at a time to help out. And, Tom's high school sweetheart returns from the dead.

The Ritual Bath by Faye Kellerman

I remembered that these books were really good, but somewhere several years ago I stopped picking them up. I guess I lost track of several series that I like because we really don't have a proper bookstore - and I don't much like paying the standard shipping and handling fee for a paperback. Anyway, I am going to enjoy rereading - and reading for the first time the ones that I have missed.

This one, naturally enough, sets up the general background. Decker and Rina meet. It is established that she is a widow with two small children. The attraction between them is immediate. She resists him and makes it clear that she will only consider dating a Jew and preferably one who is observant.

Decker and his partner are part of the LA version of what we all now know as the SVU (well, all good L&O fans do). I didn't remember that, it could be that he does go back to homicide in a later story. A serial rapist is working their part of town, and they drew the case. Then there is a rape at the yeshiva where Rina lives and works. Her husband had been part of the school, and they found work for her after his death. She teaches math at the school and she is the custodian for the mikvah, the ritual bath.

Rina discovers the victim at the yeshiva and becomes the unofficial liaison between the yeshiva and the police as the community closes ranks. The victim is unable to set aside her religious issues and talk to the police, and the community is unwilling to consider that the rapist might be a part of the yeshiva - after all, there is a serial rapist out there, and by rights it ought to be him!

Although the two series of crimes are completely separate, the similarities and differences make the story a coherent whole. I'm already looking forward to rereading the next one.

So Sure of Death by Dana Stabenow

Three in a row. It is definitely time to read something else (like a couple of textbooks that happen to be lying on my desk). These definitely lack a measure of the focus and character of the Shugak series. It is tempting to say that she really ought to stick to female leads, because it almost seems in this one that the female supporting cast is better rounded and more convincing than her hero. Maybe it was this book and the fact that a man in his middle to late thirties is fully engaged in a pissing contest with his father.

Frost is filling the role of iconic poet for this series. He is certainly better known that Theodore Roethke, the muse of the Shugak books. Stabenow seems to be trying harder to incorporate the poetic themes in the story here with fairly direct references to the poems, but they still don't seem to address the content of the story particularly.

There are three separate and unrelated crimes in this one. While that is probably more realistic than having everything come together neatly in one package at the end, it is far more difficult to manage in the fictional setting. It has been done, Dell Shannon comes to mind, but those are very decidedly police procedurals, big city police procedurals. It almost seemed that Stabenow simply didn't want to develop any one of the stories completely so she just piled several underdeveloped stories on top of each other. None of the mysteries in this book are "honest mysteries" - there is simply not enough information given on any of them. For all three, the mass murder on the boat, the killing at the dig site, and the appearance of Campbell's father at the local AF base, the answers are presented like gift-wrapped packages in the last chapter.

There is even more than her usual "beating up on the hero" - even his sweetie and her bff and the new (female) trooper assigned to the station come in for multiple beatings up and shootings. There is also quite a lot of getting naked which doesn't do much to advance the plot. By the way, his wife died without regaining consciousness.

I probably wouldn't have all these complaints about these stories if someone I had never heard of before had written them. They are just disappointing when compared to Stabenow's other series. And if you want to know what I thought of her SF series, you can go back and find my comments on the first one. Note: I have not bothered to read the second, although my sister tells me I should.