First Casuality by Mike Moscoe

Moscoe and Shepherd of the Kris Longknife stories are one and the same. Unfortunately, this time I had to read very fast to manage to finish the book. I haven't come this close to dumping one in a long time. However, the second Kris book was a much better read than the first (which I understand is not actually the first but the tenth or some such), so maybe I will give book two a try.

I would have said that the only purpose the book served was to introduce characters and some back story for the Kris books, but Google informs me that it and its two fellows were in fact written first. The primary character, Ray Longknife, is Princess Kris's grampa Ray (actually great-grampa) - also known as King Ray. In this one he is merely a marine lieutenant, who does marry and beget the initial spawn in the line of Longknife.

Aside from that, it is basically fly, fight, and kill. Lengthy, detailed descriptions of space warfare are pretty boring. There was a fair amount of ground combat as well, but it seemed remarkably pointless - except as a plot device for getting Ray seriously injured. C'mon people, why would you have ground forces in combat on an moon without atmosphere or any redeeming mineral value or population to be protected?

The title is apt, but unsubtle. The political leadership on both sides is corrupt to the point of idiocy. Oh well, maybe there will be some story in the next one.

Kris Longknife: Furious by Mike Shepherd

Good fun. I noted that the previous book didn't wrap things up. Neither did this one. The title bomb only drops in the last paragraphs of the last chapter - and opens up another whole world of plot possibilities. It still reads like space opera, but there is very little "fly, fight, and kill" in this one. In fact, I don't think anyone got killed.

The previous book, Daring, ended with Princess Kris being hauled off to jail for saving the galaxy as her newly discovered sweetheart, Jack, being hauled off to a different jail. This one opens with a jailbreak and we go from there. BTW, she does get back together with Jack.

I suppose one must categorize this as science fiction, rather than fantasy, but the tech - which to my mind marks the distinction between the two - is definitely "magic" tech. We have self-aware computers small enough to be worn by their users and magic metal that reforms itself into whatever would be convenient at the moment at the touch of a button. Not to mention bullet-stopping body armor that you can wear under your undies. By contrast, in spite of the far future setting, costume and slang are pretty standard for today - jeans and t-shirts, etc.

We also have a touch of not so far future in surveillance systems with cameras everywhere and face recognition software, much as I understand is in place in some European cities - London, for example.

Skeleton Man by Tony Hillerman

Finished on Dec26. And that is today, believe it or not. If I can just get this lot posted today, I will be officially caught up!!!

I stopped by my office on Christmas Eve to water my plants (which, by the way, are flourishing there as they never did in this house) and found this on the freebie table - a Hillerman that I hadn't read - what a Christmas gift!

The wiki informs me that there is one more that follows this one, and there may be a couple on the list that I missed somehow. It also informs me (shades of Dick Francis) that Hillerman's daughter has picked up the torch and is continuing the series. I will reserve judgment on that. Felix Francis seems to be doing a respectable job of it, maybe Anne Hillerman will also.

Here we have the emerging pattern of the later books, the retired Joe Leaphorn gets the not-so-retired Jim Chee involved in matters. This time going back to the disastrous Grand Canyon mid-air collision of two passenger aircraft back in the fifties. There is considerable emphasis on Bernadette Manuelito, Bernie, now no longer Chee's subordinate, but transferred to another jurisdiction and his fiancee.

They actually manage to get married in this one, but off-camera, in a way. We hear about it when Leaphorn reports on the event to his coffee buddies at the Navajo Cafe.

Hillerman could join Jance for this coming year's reread. I still have some Dick Francis to go, and I sort of abandoned Marcia Muller somewhere along the way. Grafton is due for a long rest before I pick up the rest of the alphabet. And Reichs and Davidson are caught up to current publications. I was considering adding Agatha and Dorothy --- Whatever, I am clearly in no danger of running out of reading material.

Reflex by Dick Francis

Finished on Dec24.

Philip Nore is a jockey - and photographer. He emerged from a very peculiar upbringing (Francis has outdone himself with this one) to have a very strong sense of right and wrong - but very little initiative about the direction of his own life. And like all floaters gets caught up in currents that sweep him in unpredictable directions.

We meet Philip lying on the ground after his horse has fallen hoping not to be damaged too badly and thinking that his is a damned stupid way for a grown man to make a living. One of Francis's best openers, I think.

The current he gets caught up in forces him to draw on his darkroom expertise to uncover a most unusual blackmailer and a not so unusual murderer.

Horizon(The Sharing Knife, Book 4) by Lois McMaster Bujold

Finished on Dec22.

They find temporary refuge at a southern Lakewalker encampment, where Dag begins serious training as a healer to further his plan of setting up as a healer in a Farmer community. He can't play by their rules, though, and is sent on his way after leaving the grounds to try to help a boy with tetanus.

The tale begins to resemble the old Nevil Shute book, Pied Piper, as they acquire more and more members of their party as they move out. By the way, Fawn is pregnant by this time.

They do, after many crises, have enough folks to settle and create a mixed population community.

This series is rather like one book that was just too long. So, instead of packing it all into a ten or eleven hundred page volume, Bujold broke it up into four volumes. The breaks are logical, I suppose, but each one begins literally within the moments following the end of the previous volume. I enjoyed it, but Dag is no Miles Vorkosigan.

Passage(The Sharing Knife, Book 3) by Lois McMaster Bujold

Finished on Dec20.

Dag had promised Fawn that he would show her the sea, so they set off downriver (down the Arkansas to the Mississippi to the delta and the gulf, sounds like). They make friends along the way, and recruits to the cause, but Dag is discouraged because one at a time doesn't seem fast enough. (Sounds like my friend/professor Doug - who isn't satisfied with one-by-one conversions.) Fawn, on the other hand, points out that conversion works exponentially (well, she didn't say that, but it was the general idea).

Legacy(The Sharing Knife, Book 2) by Lois McMaster Bujold

Finished on Dec19.

What with one thing and another, having gotten married by both Farmer and Lakewalker rites at Fawn's home, Dag and Fawn set out for Dag's home. Their reception is far less cordial than that they received at Fawn's home, which wasn't all that friendly, either. Eventually, in spite of acts of heroism on both their parts, they are invited to take themselves away. Which gives Dag the opportunity to start working on his world-view project of getting both groups working on the same team.

Beguilement(The Sharing Knife, Book 1) by Lois McMaster Bujold

Finished on Dec17.

I read the first three of this series of four several years ago. Naturally, I didn't remember enough of the first three to tackle the fourth book without rereading the earlier ones.

The geography of this world sounds a lot like the eastern US, but it isn't totally obvious. The society composed of two groups: Lakewalkers and Farmers. Farmers resemble American rural and semi-rural society of the late 1800s more or less: pre-electricity, some indoor plumbing, wood fires for heat and cooking, horses for transportation. The Lakewalkers somewhat resemble the plains indians of more or less the same period, but are much more. They have some psi powers, specifically the ability to sense "ground" - a type of life-force present in all things, particularly living things. They are highly organized and have the mission of patrolling inhabited areas for incursions of menaces known by them as "malices" and by farmers as "blight bogles" which feed on "ground" and utterly destroy everything they can reach.

The two groups are completely separate. Farmers regard Lakewalkers with superstitious fear and Lakewalkers have deep contempt for farmers. They do, of necessity, interact, but very uneasily.

So, it is obvious where this is going. A farmer girl and a Lakewalker man meet and fall in love and thereby hangs the tale.

Whip Hand by Dick Francis

Finished on Dec16.

Sid Halley (Odds Against, Dick Francis book 4) returns. I believe that Sid is the only character that Francis repeats; I think he could be a series in his own right - except that Francis does tend to brutalize his heroes rather badly.

If you recall, Sid had concluded his collection of cases so successfully that Radnor was making him a partner in the newly reconstituted Radnor-Halley Agency. Unfortunately, after the end of that book and the beginning of this one, Radnor collapsed and died without completing the partnership papers; a random nephew appeared and took possession; and Sid was out. His sidekick, Chico Barnes, has joined him in his new venture as an independent investigator.

Anyway, multiple investigations, brutal beatings, horses murdered, all the usual. Among other things, Sid saves his ex-wife from a probable prison sentence. No, there is no reconciliation, she isn't really even grateful. Let's face it: Jenny is not a nice girl and is a great disappointment to her father. Sid does hook up with a rather nice girl - Jenny's ex-housemate - but there is not any sense of permanence to that relationship.

Maybe the previous book, Trial Run, struck the general reading public and Dick Francis fans specifically rather as it did me, leaving Francis in need of a solid winner to get everybody back. Bet this one did the job.

Trial Run by Dick Francis

Finished on Dec14.

Disappointing. I suppose I have read this one before since it was there on my shelf, but I didn't remember anything about it.

I'm not sure why this one doesn't work for me; it seems to have the elements that drive the others, but somehow it simply falls flat. Perhaps it is the setting; the Soviet Union of the period is not a particularly charming environment. The plot is also political and rather strained - strained to the point of silliness.

Heralds of Valdemar by Mercedes Lackey

Finished on Dec12. Yet again.

Yes, I reread all three books in the series. I always pick them up thinking that I am only going to read the first one - or even only the first chapter of the first one - and end up reading all three of them cover to cover.

These are the ones I go to when I want something familiar and not too demanding with characters that I really like. Times like this week - final exam week. Students think they are the ones stressed - if they only knew.

Betsy-Tacy by Maud Hart Lovelace

Finished on Dec7.

This was a quick run back to my childhood. I read all of these when I was in grade school. The two little girls meet and, after a rough start, become best friends.

They have endless adventures, both real and imaginary, and it all rings true for the place and the period. When they start school, the shy one has to be dragged to school sobbing by her older sister. Reminded me of the time ... well, never mind about that.

The piano crate in the backyard, dressing up in their mothers' clothes and going calling on the new people in the biggest house in town, catching a ride on a floating feather and sailing over the town - all seem to be formed from the memory of a couple of real little girls.

It is nice to reread something that I read and loved as a child without being embarrassed for my complete lack of taste and literary judgment.

The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon

Finished on Dec7.

This is about as different from The Deed of Paksenarrion as I can imagine, except in her creation of absolutely compelling characters and a story that grabs you and hangs on. It is set in a near future United States, so near that those who don't read much science fiction might not notice. It is inevitable to compare it to Daniel Keyes' "Flowers for Algernon."

Lou is an autistic adult. It has been discovered that there are tasks that his kind of mind can perform far more effectively than "normal" minds or computer software, and the pharmaceutical firm that he works for has an entire unit of autistic adults working in an environment that allows them to manage their problems. Lou is well-adapted, likes his work, has a life beyond his job, and is falling in love with a "normal" woman who reciprocates his feelings.

Then he and his colleagues are presented with a "cure" for their condition. Lou's question is whether or not he will be the same person if he takes the treatment. He likes who he is; he likes his job; he has friends; and he loves Marjory. Would any of those things remain the same?

Moon's credentials for the topic are impeccable: her son is autistic, she has lived with the fact of autism for his entire life - with the fear and misunderstanding of people outside their world and the obstacles that the world places in the paths of people who are different.

Very early in the story Lou tells us "Everything in my life that I value has been gained at the cost of not saying what I really think and saying what they want me to say." The statement shocked me because I can identify with it in many ways. When I started school, successful bright little girls learned quickly to sit down and shut up - to keep our heads down. And how many of us have learned the same lesson on the job - whatever job we might have? One of my colleagues put it rather harshly: "I can be a good house slave - 'Yes, Massa, jes' tell me what to do.' Why would my opinion and experience matter, I'm not entitled to an opinion and my experience is clearly of no interest whatsoever to those making operational decisions."

I think that is the primary message here - maybe different isn't all that different after all.

Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

Finished on 2Dec.

What fun! I'm quite certain that I read this several years ago, but I had forgotten - have to love my convenient memory. It really comes in handy when I am economizing and trying to buy fewer books.

Sophie, our heroine, is quite amazingly calm about her fate. As the eldest of three, she is doomed (by fairy tale tradition) to be a failure. As we all know, it is the youngest that is fated for glory. In accord with tradition, after the death of the mother of the older two girls, their father remarries and has another daughter, then dies himself. Unlike the obvious parallel tale, the stepmother is quite fond of all three girls and raises them all as her own. She apprentices the two younger out and keeps Sophie with her to learn the milliner's trade in expectation of inheriting the shop some day - as the eldest.

As she makes and trims hats, Sophie, all unwittingly, is enchanting them - which earns her the enmity of the evil Witch of the Waste - who turns her (no, not into a toad) but into a ninety year-old crone.

Sophie decides to make the best of things as an old woman - and actually discovers that it has its advantages. Old women may be excused for some rather outrageous behavior - my own grandmother being a case in point. "When I am an old woman I shall wear purple, and a red had that doesn't go." Grandmother never wore purple, and the Red Hat ladies are the very antithesis of the spirit of Jennie Joseph's poem. And, besides, I was talking about Sophie Hatter.

Although Sophie is philosophical about old age, and does not particularly seek to have her own curse reversed, it is reversed - eventually - and she reverts to being a beautiful seventeen year old. And - in a radical break with tradition - does not win the heart of the handsome prince - but that of the handsome wizard - and finds suitable husbands for both of her sisters.

Risk by Dick Francis

Finished on 1Dec.

Roland Britten is an accountant - and amateur jockey, of course. The senior partner in his accounting firm is also heavily involved in racing and allows him great flexibility in his working hours so he can go racing. Then one day Roland is kidnapped after a day of racing and held on a boat. The reason why is unclear. There is clearly no intent to kill him - just to keep him out of circulation - since he is not of the class or income bracket to make ransom an issue. Then the bookkeeping irregularities start to appear.

In the Frame by Dick Francis

Finished on 30 Nov.

I occasionally miss the point of Francis's titles (not as bad as Grafton's, but she had her gimmick to stick to) - this was not one of them.

Our hero arrives at his brother's house for a visit and finds a police investigation into his brother's wife's murder - for which his brother is "in the frame" as the prime suspect. And it all turns on an elaborate scam involving some paintings - which were also framed, I believe. Besides all that, the hero is a painter. A painter of portraits of race horses, which provides the Francis racing connection. All good fun - plus a trip to Australia.

"P" is for Peril by Sue Grafton

Finished on 28Nov.

I notice that I have remembered enough to write at least some minimal notes about most of the books that I read a month or so ago - okay, not quite that - the date on this one is November 28th and today is Christmas Eve - but the point is that I remember at least some salient details about the stories I have read - with the exception of the Sue Grafton books. These I have to reopen and check out the beginning and maybe the end before I recall anything about them.

My current theory is that part of the problem is the lack of connection between the titles and the text. Early in the series I think she did a better job of that, but by this point the connections are vague at best.

This one begins with a missing doctor and progresses through the usual murder and mayhem. I do remember where and more or less how they found the body, I simply can't remember why the vic was murdered.

Close to His Heart by Leonora Pruner

Finished on 26Nov.

Very Georgette Heyer, but with much more scripture. Rather implausible in most respects, but no end of good intentions - in spite of the fact that we meet our heroine as she is attempting to sneak out of the house to elope with a footman. (Major implausibility #1). She is thwarted in her intentions, however, by a young man who has come to court her at the recommendation of his recently deceased father. His man having informed him of stable gossip of the intended elopement, he takes up his station for the night on the floor outside her bedroom door to prevent her escape. (Major implausibility #2 - or maybe #3, if you count his haring off to marry a girl recommended by his papa.)

My sister purchased this - and I read it - cooperative learning, or something. Christian romantic fiction is not the genre of choice for either one of us - even Christian historical romantic fiction, but we are acquainted with the author and thought it worth a try.

Flying Changes by Sara Gruen

Finished on 25Nov.

I enjoyed Riding Lessons which I read some time ago. Nothing to compare with Water for Elephants, which I probably mentioned then, but it was pleasant, a bit more "coming of age" or "finally growing up" than heavy duty romance, but all right. So, when this one appeared on the "under $4" list ---

About the same, not a strain in any way but a reasonably good read. More mother/daughter dramatics, of course. I was left feeling that, if she goes on for four or five more of these, she may actually get Annemarie to something resembling adulthood. Her daughter seems to be growing up successfully - and deserves an adult for a mother.

Booked to Die by John Dunning

Finished on 24Nov.

Another first of a series. A friend recommended these "bookman" books a number of years ago. There are, unfortunately, only five of them - but one is new since I read the others! I love Google! I've actually read one of his not from this series, and had never made the connection - Two A.M., Eastern War Time. I read that while I was in Africa over ten years ago - and left it there - but Amazon will provide, no doubt.

Cliff Janeway starts the series as a cop who can't quite manage to work within the lines and eventually leaves the force to pursue his other passion - antique and collectible books. But - setting up in business as a bookman doesn't keep him out of trouble.

I do like the juxtaposition of old books and violent crime.

Until Proven Guilty by JA Jance

Finished on 22Nov.

More dead kids. This is the first of the J.P. Beaumont stories. I knew I had read it, and even remembered some of the back story. I just didn't remember that all of that happened in the first book. It was sort of like watching the first episode of "Hill Street Blues" when it finally came out on DVD. The events and story lines that I thought ran the entire first season all opened in that first episode.

Beaumont is one of those depressed cop characters and, as I recall - which may not be the way the series develops at all, he gets more depressed as time goes on. Which at some point has him drying out at a spa in Arizona and encountering Sheriff Joanna Brady - I think, maybe ---

I guess Jance may have to be my next big reread. With all three series, there are a bunch of them.

Bones are Forever by Kathy Reichs

Finished on 21Nov.

Tempe is called to the scene of the discovery of a fairly recently dead newborn infant, and it goes exponential when, on a hunch, they search the apartment and find two older infant bodies. And from there, they follow a trail of dead infants across the frozen northern wastelands. Cheery, but as always from Reichs, a great read.

The truly depressing bit is that this is the most recent one. Not only had I not read it before - there aren't any more yet.

"O" is for Outlaw by Sue Grafton

Finished on 19Nov.

The outlaw in question is Kinsey's first ex-husband, ex-cop Mickey Macgruder. Seems like her second ex was dealt with several volumes ago.

Sadly, these are becoming less memorable as we go along. The vehicle for reconnecting with ex-1 was clever, though. A guy whose sideline during the off-season for roofing is scavenging storage lockers finds a box of Kinsey's belongings in an abandoned locker and sells it to her. There isn't any particularly clear reason while she hunts up good ol' Mickey, however.

Web of Evil by JA Jance

Finished on 16Nov.

I'm glad that somewhere down the line Jance abandons the "Something of Evil" titles; they really make me cringe.

Ali returns to LA for the formal divorce proceedings. After all, her husband's fiancee is perilously close to delivery - in fact, their wedding is scheduled for the day after the divorce is finalized. Unfortunately, murder intervenes and Ali is left a widow instead of a divorcee.

I believe that after this, Ali gets to do her investigating in Arizona.

Edge of Evil by JA Jance

Finished on 15Nov.

The first one of Jance's Ali Reynolds books. Jance has three series with quite different detectives. The first ones I ran into were the Beaumont books about a Seattle cop. Then the Joanna Brady books about an Arizona sheriff. And now these. I'm not sure about the order of writing - maybe she switches around for variety.

In this one Ali has been summarily dumped from her job as a news anchor, and by her husband one of whose hobbies has become pregnant. To add to her distress, an old friend of hers is dead, apparently a suicide. So she packs up, leaves LA, and heads back to Sedona, Arizona, to check into the circumstances of her friend's death.

Deadly Stakes by JA Jance

Finished on 14Nov.

I had started this when I had to reboot my computer - and forgot that I had been working on this file group - and had not saved. Sad, and an ironic event because I had just been commenting that although it was less than three weeks ago that I read this - and I had enjoyed it enough to "run" to Amazon and buy the first two books in the series, which I also enjoyed - I remembered nothing about the story. I am sure that is significant in some way. Or perhaps it is simply my ability to forget all about a whodunit, which allows me to reread it.

High Stakes by Dick Francis

Finished on 11Nov.

This has always been one of my favorites along with a much later one - Shattered. Both feature creative geniuses, this one a designer of mechanical toys and the other an artist working with hot glass.

Steven Scott has made a fortune from his line of mechanical toys and has graduated to big boy toys for himself - in the form of race horses and racing. The story opens as he fires his trainer for systematically cheating him. The opening irony is that Steven has discovered that Jody Leeds, his trainer, has a clever little number going in gambling scams, and when he confronts Jody with cheating him - Jody inadvertently gives away the fact that he has been cheating him on supplies and services. And even that turns out to be only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

"N" is for Noose by Sue Grafton

Finished on 11Nov. So much for my resolution to stay on top of this. I've been spending so much time madly crocheting baby gifts that I'm way behind again - and I'm not done yet! I can knit or crochet and read at the same time, but not type...

These notes will be brief until I catch up. This is one of Kinsey's out of town jobs. She has been over in Nevada with Dietz during his knee surgery and stopped in Small Town, Cali, to take on this job the job for an old client of his. So this time she has the stranger thing going against her.

The title refers to the MO which is all that connects a couple of murders. This had been spotted by the primary murder victim - a cop in this small town, the client is his wife - also an outsider and not highly regarded by the locals.

I'm wondering if this is when Kinsey starts bemoaning her lack of judgment in taking each and every case. I've read two more since this one, and she whines along this line in both.

Hellfire (Theirs Not to Reason Why) by Jean Johnson

Finished on 9Nov.

"Hellfire" is Ia's doomsday ship - and the members of her handpicked crew are Ia's Damned.

Hellfire and the Damned run around the galaxy picking off the bad guys and working to set up the sequences of events that will save the galaxy three hundred years in the future.

We have known for some time that Ia and her half-twin brother (different mothers/same father) are the children of a member of an energy-based species that can operate on the physical plane if necessary and whose primary purpose is to interfere in the workings of the universe of physical beings. Hence, they are generally known as "Meddlers." This is their great "game." What we haven't known until this story is that half-breeds like Ia can sometimes actual become members of the club.

I was warned that I wouldn't like the ending - and I didn't - for the usual reason. There is no conclusion; everything is just left hanging for the next book in the series. Always annoying - but not so annoying that I won't read the next one - as sometimes has happened.

An Officer's Duty (Theirs Not to Reason Why) by Jean Johnson

Having accomplished all she can as an enlisted Marine, Ia is awarded a field commission and is shipped of to OCS. A curious feature of TUPSF (remember - Terran United Planets Space Force) is that it encompasses all of the conventional branches of the military with the exception of the Air Force - I suppose because in-atmosphere flight is simply passe - or at least superceded by space flight. I wonder why it is that in science fiction it is always the Navy that flies space ships, perhaps it is because space flight vehicles are traditionally known as "ships" - hence the responsibility falls to the Navy with its archaic ranking system.

Whatever. At any rate, Ia has the choice to attend the officer's academy in any branch and chooses the navy because she knows that she must be ready to command a ship to be built with a doomsday weapon that only she can handle.

At the academy, Ia encounters a man who is invisible to her precognition. This makes their relationship something very different for her. This also constitutes a flashing neon light saying "This guy is important!!!"

Johnson's prose is certainly effective in the context, if not extremely imaginative, but she dropped in the word "politarazzi" - a new one to me. Google informs me that it is probably not of her coinage - but it is such a charming and descriptive word that I am eternally grateful to her for throwing it in my path.

A Soldier's Duty (Theirs Not to Reason Why) by Jean Johnson

I read this fairly recently - that is within the last couple of years, I think - almost certainly within the period of this record - but I didn't remember it well enough to read the next two in the series which my sister recently purchased. It was worth the reread. I'm certainly not an expert, but the military setting seemed fairly plausible, with the possible exception of the rapid advancement of our heroine, Ia ("just Ia, no more, no less"). Certainly the heartburn her name (or lack thereof) causes with the military resonates with anyone who has ever dealt with bureaucracy at any level.

Ia is a precog and has as her mission nothing less than saving the galaxy from a predatory species due to arrive in three hundred years. In the meantime she is working at saving the good guys from the Salik, a really nasty bunch of amphibians who prefer to eat their meat alive, kicking, and screaming, and who find humans particularly tasty.

Her vehicle for galactic salvation is the TUPSF (Terran United Planets Space Force) Marine Corps. Having been born and raised a heavy-worlder, she has obvious advantages as a Marine - faster, stronger, etc. But none of that compares with the advantage of her wide range of psi talents. Precognition is the strongest, but it is only the first in a long list of of talents.

So, is this space opera? It has some of the elements, but it also has strong characters - strong, well-developed characters. There are also at least two levels of plot and thereby motiving forces. Not characteristics of space opera in general. On the other hand, there is a great abundance of action and heroics and blood and gore. Then there is the scene at the end of boot camp when the DI orders her to tow the bus with the remainder of her class back to camp ...

Relic (Pendergast, Book 1) by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

This may be only the first Pendergast book by this pair, but it is the last one I will read. I think they were trying to create a more sophisticated Fox Mulder, and failed utterly. The heroic FBI agent was flat and lacked personality, although the monster was as grotesque as any from the X-Files.

The setting should have been interesting - the Smithsonian renamed and relocated to New York - but the characters inhabiting it were bizarre parodies of scientists and administrators.

To add to their other crimes against literature, they stole without attribution the Churchill line about Russia - "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." I don't believe they even gave the lazy researcher's excuse "didn't somebody once say: ... ." I find that line frequently in stories - along with the query : "Who was it said " ... ?" This, of course, gives the characters the opportunity to discuss who said it and why their own situation is different.

Oh well, this was a disappointment and not worth any further effort toward discussing it.

Kris Longknife: Daring by Mike Shepherd

Space opera, gotta love it.

The politics resemble small town city council wrangling and when the Princess of one bunch decides to take her ship and crew to investigate the disappearances of ships belonging to the friendly aliens both the over- protective and the over-suspicious insist on sending massive battle-wagons to accompany her. By the way, the Princess and the Grand-duchess of the somewhat hostile opposing clan (think Hatfield/McCoy cliches) agree that the multi-tentacled semi-aquatic alien is "kinda cute." Take it from there.

They discover the hostile aliens - who, imagine the horror, resemble human beings rather markedly (no heavy-handed message there). All the battle ships are destroyed and the Princess eventually manages to limp home with her cruiser to face court martial for something or other.

No story lines are concluded, everything is left hanging, and the Princess Pauline will doubtless live to be in peril another day - she may even someday be reunited with her security chief.

Complaints aside, it is space opera and it was mostly fun, if a little repetitive. I am informed that this is not the first book in the series, and that in earlier exercises there was more closure at the end of each. I have frequently had the uncomfortable suspicion that sometimes series writers feel that they must do something to trick readers into buying the next book. One might hope that good writing, good characters, and a satisfying plot ought to do the trick, but it would appear that the incomplete ending is less work.

Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris

Some months ago I read the second book in this series. At the time, I ordered this book on paper since it wasn't available for kindle. It has been on my "to read soon" shelf ever since - but I don't often read on paper these days. Then it popped up on my kindle! My sister had finally gotten around to reading the second book, City of Veils, and when she went looking for book one - it had been released for kindle. Not the first time this has happened.

Whatever. I am pleased to note that if I had read this one first I would have gone looking for the second. This one begins with the disappearance of a young woman rather than the discovery of a body, but again the motives are bound up in Saudi religious law and moral codes. And, as in her second book, Americans are involved, although not as deeply in this one.

In spite of the title note - Katya Kijazi - the focal character is definitely Nayir. Although Katya provides information and access, the insights into the crime come primarily from Nayir. We are also privy to his struggles be a good muslim in spite of the great temptations placed in his way.

I have to wonder if Ferraris's experiences in Saudi Arabia and with her Saudi husband and his family truly make her qualified to comment in such depth on Saudi culture. In the second book, we are given a view through the eyes and mind of an American woman, a woman whose situation was fundamentally different from Ferraris's own, but still an educated American, not a Saudi woman of any economic or educational level. I have often thought that one of our national errors is assuming that all people are fundamentally the same - even as I find it difficult to write that without making excuses for that statement. I suspect that the patterns of thinking in the Middle East are quite different from ours and the careless assumption that all of us have the same fundamental priorities is responsible for many problems.

Knockdown by Dick Francis

Back to reading two books at once - and both on paper. I need to get back to my Kindle, because I am losing ground on my current crochet project. I can't hold a book and crochet at the same time, but I can push the page turn button from time to time.

Francis wrote to a formula, but he always managed to vary it enough to ensure that the books don't blur together in similarity. This time we have a guy who ought to be depressed, but doesn't seem to be. He has an alcoholic brother, and trick shoulder that took him out of racing, and is just getting by as a bloodstock agent. He meets a woman that he would like to marry, but realizes that, although she is willing to carry on a long term relationship, marriage is simply a non-starter.

He is attacked and his business is attacked for no apparent reason, and typical of Francis's heroes, he decides to fight back. A number of people end up dead, but no horses this time. Well, a couple of horses, but they were killed long before the beginning of this story.

This one ends sort of inconclusively. The uberbads are dead, but nothing in Jonah's life is resolved.

Savannah Purchase by Jane Aiken Hodge

This was on the freebie table, someone had apparently rescued it when it was discarded by the local high school library then passed it on. I suppose these aren't racy enough for high school students today, but I loved them - there are still a number of them on my shelves although I haven't read them in years.

I've always remembered them as gothic romances - but this wasn't terribly gothic. The initial situation could easily have fit the genre, but it really played out as a complicated situational romance. It opens with a young woman at the point of destitution in her ramshackle home after the death of her father realizing that his debts have left her with no resources at all. In sweeps her long lost cousin with a proposition. The resemblance between the two has always been remarkable and Juliet is to take Josephine's place in Savannah society (including with her unsuspecting husband) while Josephine goes off to try to arrange for the rescue of Napoleon from St. Helena.

Only the nurse/maid who cared for them both as children in France is in the know. The husband is indifferent and a complete brute. Besides, if Juliet doesn't go along with the masquerade, she is likely to be imprisoned because her father made her party to his debts.

Predictably, Juliet immediately falls for her cousin's husband and falls afoul of her lover. It is pleasant and entertaining, the sort of book where you know from the beginning that everything will work out in the end.

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

This book has been banned by the public schools in another city in this state. According to the wire service article that I read "a parent pointed out a passage in Neverwhere that describes a sexual encounter and uses a curse word." This apparently is the first complaint in the nine years that the book has been in the curriculum. I am a devoted fan of banned books, so I decided immediately to read it and discover what the fuss was all about. I believe that someone said "hell" somewhere in the first few pages, but I did not find "graphic detail - an intimate situation between two adults." Well -- he did kiss a succubus, but was rescued before things got too far along. Apparently the torture and butchery of several people, succubi, a fallen angel, and such were less disturbing to the parent than the kiss. Or perhaps the parent in question had not actually read the book and took the word of her daughter who had maybe fallen behind in the assigned reading. Maybe I should read it again concentrating on locating the prurient material.

Seriously, I probably won't reread it any time soon. It has all the Gaiman blending of the real and unreal leaving the distinct impression that the unreal is more real than the real - but it seems to lack the light touch and quirkiness that I have come to associate with Gaiman's work. However, I did not find material likely to corrupt the minds of American teenagers.

A rather boring young man, Richard Mayhew, through an act of humanity, stumbles into a shadow world imposed on modern London. The denizens of this world refer to it as London Below, and it does exist in part in the tunnels and sewers and such below the city proper, but it also overlaps "London Above." Inhabitants of London Below are not seen or noticed by those living in London Above - but they are there. Metaphor, perhaps, for the invisible people inhabiting our own world or for the human talent for ignoring that which makes us uncomfortable.

The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett

Okay - I just finished this late last night, so (assuming I manage to get it posted today) I am officially caught up again.

In some ways this is similar to The Casual Vacancy by Rowling, but it is much better done. There is not an awful lot of plot, it is all character - and all of the characters revolve around the guy that died before the story actually began. Unlike the Rowling book, many, even most, of these characters are likeable. The situations are unusual, but the characters work through them and with each other effectively.

The magician dies before the story begins and his assistant of twenty-some years (and wife of six months or so) is central. He married her after his gay partner of many years dies, because he has AIDS also and wants to care for her future.

Enclosed with the magician's will leaving the bulk of his not inconsiderable estate to Sabine, the assistant/wife, is a document establishing a trust for his mother and two sisters. Sabine was completely unaware of the existence of these people. Everything he told her about his life was fiction.

Sabine is a true Californian; her family brought her there as a small child from Israel. The magician's family is a blue-collar bunch living in small-town Nebraska. The development of their relationship is the meat of the story.

As in Bel Canto, Patchett has brought together characters from almost unimaginably diverse backgrounds and lets them all grow through their interactions. Most enjoyable.

Imager's Intrigue by L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

The opening line could be "five years later." Rhennthyl and Seliora are married and the proud parents of three-year-old Diestrya - named, apparently, for Seliora's grandmother. They live in master's quarters on Imagisle and Rhennthyl is now a Captain of the Civic Patrol - punishment for his successes in the previous book.

Solidaran politics have been a major theme throughout and this time are central - along with the activities of those pesky Ferrans, who seem to be intent on taking over the world. Solidar is the only country in their world which includes imagers in their society, they are distrusted everywhere else - and in some places subject to being killed on sight. The Solidaran system of society and government is feudal in some respects. High Holders are their aristocracy, guilds manage most manufacturing and trade, and there are the taudis where people individually scratch out such living as they can. On the other hand, they are governed by a council which is composed of representatives of most groups (with the obvious exception of the very poor). There is even an Imager representative.

Sounds better than the theocracies and oligarchies and what all that govern all the other countries, but it has fallen prey to maintaining the status quo and that has left Solidar open to corruption at all levels.

Just a comment on the technology. It seems extremely odd to me that the author would have created a society which has trains (ironways) and mechanized sea power, but has neglected to invent any form of high speed or distance communication. I suppose this places them at the steam power level, maybe electricity hadn't quite happened yet.

The Lost Tools of Learning by Dorothy Sayers

I suppose, in all fairness, that this should not really count as a book, but it was certainly interesting. This is an article/pamphlet based on a talk that Sayers gave at Oxford in 1947.

She deplores the degeneration of education into the teaching of subjects without teaching learning. She says it herself most eloquently. "For we let our young men and women go out unarmed, in a day when armour was never so necessary. By teaching them all to read, we have left them at the mercy of the printed word. By the invention of film and the radio, we have made certain that no aversion to reading shall secure them from the incessant battery of words, words, words. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are a prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects.We who were scandalised in 1940 when men were sent to fight armoured tanks with rifles, are not scandalised when young men and women are sent into the world to fight massed propaganda with a smattering of "subjects"; and when whole classes and whole nations become hypnotised by the arts of the spell-binder, we have the impudence to be astonished."

If she was horrified then, what would she think now - when in America even the "subject" is no longer taught, only the isolated facts which are "on the test."

Imager's Challenge by L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

People keep trying to kill our hero of the unspellable and possibly unpronounceable name and he keeps getting better at killing them instead.

Modesitt plays language games, I suppose to try and make us all truly understand that this all takes place in a galaxy far, far away, but the roots are often very near the surface. For example, the days of the week in Solidar are Lundi, Mardi, Meredi, Jeudi, Vendrei, Samedi, and Solayi - which are almost the same as the days of the week in French (Wednesday is mercredi and Friday is vendredi and Sunday is dimanche). The names of the months are less directly stolen, but have enough similarities that they are recognizeable.

People's names are another game. Many are simply long and odd. The hero's name is Rhennthyl and his sweetie is Seliora. His boss's name is Dichartyn, and so on. On the other hand, his brother is named Roussel - which seems to fit until you try to pronounce it and it becomes "Russell." Many names fit that pattern - conventional name, peculiar spelling. Of course, in this day of odd spellings of names they don't seem quite so odd.

By the way, the name of the country out to destroy Solidar which has the highest dependence on mechanized technology in their world is named Ferrum. Think back to your high school Latin. And the name for the slum areas of the city where the gangs hang out is "taudis" - which a quick google identifies as the French word for hovel or slum. I think it is a safe bet that Mr. Modesitt took French in high school.

Our hero is busy courting his future wife and using her family's network of information sources to run things down. He also is assigned to walk a beat with the local cops and establishes a working relationship with a couple of the taudis gang leaders. He also is assigned to paint portraits of various important and senior imagers, which gives us an opportunity to get acquainted with them. And people keep shooting at him.

Dirt by Stuart Woods

The title could fit this story in more than one way, but if Woods cut out the gratuitous sex and concentrated on the story he would only have a rather short novella.

Someone is dishing the dirt on several society players via anonymous faxes to those well placed to damage their careers (such as they are). It seems rather silly that those who live by telling dirty tales on everyone else would be expected to live lives of high moral standards, so where is the shock value in learning that they do not?

At least, this book clarifies the issue Barrington's missing girl-friend in the next book, which I accidentally read out of sequence. In that one, she was absent so he could spend all his time in bed with the accused murderess. She is very much present in this one, occasionally she even has clothing on, but seldom for long.

"M" is for Malice by Sue Grafton

This summer I promised myself that, once I caught up with this, I would not fall behind again and here I am five books behind. Then - having written up this one and the next one - someone (almost certainly someone with four furry feet) turned off my computer by stepping on the switch for the plug strip and my files were gone. I keep reminding myself never to leave stuff unsaved on my desktop, but I never seem to pay attention for long.

This Grafton had a twist that was completely new in this series. We had a ghost. A real ghost - just imagine Kinsey Milhone and a ghost. It added a touch of weirdness to a piece that was pretty standard otherwise. I don't think the ghost contributed significantly to the solution to the mystery, but it was significantly strange.

Kinsey's cousin, Tasha, an estate attorney, brings Kinsey into this one. An old man dies and one of his four sons is missing, in fact, has been missing for almost twenty years after being cast off, the designated black sheep. The existing will still names him as an heir in spite of claims by all and sundry that the old man had disenherited him, so he must be found. Obviously, he is dead and one of the remaining brothers did the deed. Well, not so much - Kinsey finds him almost immediately with little effort and returns him to the bosom of his family.

The black sheep has reformed and is devoting his life to good works, and Kinsey finds him a much nicer person than any of his siblings. Naturally, he is promptly murdered and Kinsey determines to bring the murderer to justice.

The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling

Encouraged by The Cuckoo's Calling I charged right into this one for which Rowling declined to hide behind a nom de plume. She narrates well, I kept reading all the way to the end, but this is depressing enough to have been Russian.

It also has a few technical problems. First of all, there are no particularly likeable characters. Maybe the guy who dies in the first chapter would have been a good guy, but, as noted, he dies in the first chapter. Second, there are lots of characters and it was never clear to me which were central. Omniscience on the part of the author is all well and good, but when we are set to wandering around in the thought processes of a dozen or so characters, it can be difficult to follow the thread, assuming there is one - a point I am not willing to concede.

Third, and this is a problem which I have noted before although probably not in this setting, she is very dependent on phonetic representation of dialect, thus rendering much of the dialogue unintelligible to the average reader, certainly to the American reader - although I suspect it makes rough going for many British readers as well. It is also a problem in much of Mark Twain's writing although there the purpose was humor, and here it is to emphasize class distinctions (I think). I continually had to stop and sound out the letter groups on the page and still frequently could only guess from context what was being said.

Finally, the plot is amorphous at best. The title addresses a peculiarity of British local government. When someone dies in office, the result is known as a "casual vacancy." The guy who dies in the beginning was a councilman and the title, at least, refers to the seat left vacant and the candidates and electoral malfeasance surrounding the filling of the position.

The whole business is curiously unsatisfying. I suspect the idea was to show all the characters through their associations with and feelings about the dead guy. And - feel free to show me the error of my thinking - it doesn't quite come off.

The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (aka JK Rowling)

This has the characters and potential to be the lead in a string of series murder mysteries. A bit convoluted, but well managed. The opening is a scene of the death of supermodel Lula Landry. The police investigation submits a verdict of suicide, but the brother of the deceased eventually goes to private detective Cormoran Strike because he is convinced that it was murder.

Took me a while on the title. It seems to be connected to the fact that one of Lula's friends was in the habit of calling her Cuckoo. Each of her friends had a different name for her, it seems. However, that is not the real connection, I think. The cuckoo is best known (after its distinctive call) for its habit of finding a momentarily unattended nest, pitching out the eggs, and laying its own there for another bird to raise. Lula and both of her brothers, one of whom died as a pre-adolescent, were all adopted. The detective, Strike, is the illegitimate son of a much married rock star (perhaps patterned unsympathetically on Mick Jagger) who neglected to marry Strike's mother, an acknowledged supergroupie. A whole collection of potential cuckoos.

I would like to see a second book, if only to see how long it takes competent and concerned no-longer-temp secretary, Robin, to dump her tediously conservative fiance.

The Hydrogen Murder by Camille Minichino

Disappointing. Perhaps I just read it in the wrong company. It is a little unrealistic to expect a formula "cozy" mystery to hold its own among the stuff that I have been reading just recently. And this is definitely "cozy." I know I have debated with myself the definition of the cozy mystery genre without solving the puzzle, but I will unhesitatingly label this one. This leaves me with a PhD physicist as the protagonist of a cozy mystery while Miss Marple, an elderly lady who is never more than a few feet from her knitting, is not.

It is possible that my problem has something to do with the fact that this 55-year-old woman with a doctorate in physics (although Minichino never specifies her speciality) behaves like a 14-year-old with a crush on her history teacher over the cop who is heading the investigation into the murder. I found her twittering and dithering extremely irritating, even embarrassing. I also found the ex-boyfriend who had carried the torch for thirty years while she was on the west coast rather ridiculous.

Minichino, herself, is a physicist on faculty at a rather prestigious university. I assume that the science is not without merit. But even the science loses credibility in the hands of the cast of this piece. I do hope that the author is not attempting to pattern her heroine after herself.

Dead in the Water by Stuart Woods

When this appeared on my kindle, I thought it was the second book in the series, it isn't. It is the third - so I have purchased the second book for the sake of near continuity. I did wonder where the girlfriend came from since I didn't remember her appearance in book one. Sometimes things happen between books, but mostly not. She dumps him, though - and I don't believe she makes a live appearance at all.

They were supposed to fly down for a vacation on a yacht which they were to pick up at the island of St. Marks somewhere in the Caribbean. I satisfied myself that the island is completely fictional. She misses the plane, gets snowed in, and then goes to California with an old "friend." At least I know not to get too fond of her in book two.

In the meantime, our hero, Stone Barrington, has barely had time to become disgruntled over his sweetie's absence when the yacht Expansive appears - with a beautiful blonde sailing her. A blonde who had departed from the Canary Islands with her husband aboard and arrived at St. Marks without him. A murder trial ensues with Barrington acting for the defense.

I remember that the ending of the first of these, New York Dead, was extremely twisted and perverse. I don't know yet if this is the pattern for Woods, but the twists in this one fully measure up to that standard - and just when you think you have them all - there's another.

Woods is in danger of writing a book with no likeable characters at all. Barrington himself does not show well - he is in bed with the blonde while he still expects the girlfriend on the next flight and suffers no qualms about jeopardizing her case by allowing others to notice how easily she is comforted for the loss of her much loved husband.

Still, a good read - there was one point at which I considered putting it away unfinished, but I don't remember particularly what it was. Perhaps it was in consideration of the extremely bizarre legal system on the island. Trial one day, 24 hours for an appeal to the prime minister, execution by hanging the next day. It seems they were extremely short of jail cells.

By the way, he also dropped a teaser for his next book - which I found a little annoying. Remember the girlfriend who ran off to California. As this one wraps up, Stone gets a call from her now husband; she has gone missing and only Stone has a prayer of finding her.

Angel-Seeker by Sharon Shinn

Another one that has been around the house for years and that I hadn't read. I can't imagine why I hadn't. The Samaria trilogy are on my very short list of books to reread fairly often. It is a hard-cover and I don't like them much - they are heavy - and big. I suppose it could also have something to do with the reason I own the hard-cover copy of this book. I found it on a table at a garage sale for a quarter and picked it up and flipped it open to find that it was signed. I hadn't bought it before because I tend to resist the books that many excellent writers produce to line their pockets by cashing in on an extremely popular character or universe.

So - I finally picked it up and was captivated as always by Shinn's pure story-telling ability. This one is set in Samaria-time shortly after the end of the first book, Archangel. The book actually consists of two stories which overlap in time and space, but intersect only minimally. She picks up one of the more appealing side characters from Archangel, Obadiah, the angel who does most of the work of reconciling Rachel to her new role as Angelica, and one of the least appealing of the societal groups, the Jansai, nomads dedicated to greed and seething over the elimination of slavery under the new Archangel. She also tracks the career of one of the angel-seekers, as women who flock to the vicinity of the angel holds with the intention of conceiving a child by an angel are contemptuously called.

The story is exciting, the characters engaging and the line of probability stretched almost to the breaking point. That may seem like a silly statement in the context of fantasy/science fiction, but it seems appropriate here. It seems improbable to the point of absurdity that two girls who are part of a culture that does not permit women to be seen in public - or even in their own homes by men other than very close relatives - without full robes and veils are able to meet men from other groups and carry on long-standing affairs with them. On the other hand, having suspended disbelief to the extent of angels with wings who must mate with "mortal" women (or men) to produce offspring, I suppose it is unreasonable to expect probability in other areas. Although, I might argue that the feature that makes much fantasy appealing is the consistency and/or plausibility of the mundane aspects of life.

Good book, anyway. Upon googling, I found that Shinn has another series going. I will have to check that out - and I think I will be acquiring her books in Kindle format for the sake of convenience (that means not having to hunt for them on the shelves and in boxes).

Pavilion of Women by Pearl S. Buck

I had never read this. I've read The Good Earth several times, even taught it once, but I never felt compelled to embark on a course of Pearl Buck novels. I probably wouldn't have read it now if my sister hadn't gotten it - and asked me if I had looked at it. So I did. Once started, I couldn't put it down. And that's a phrase I usually reserve for those extremely tense mystery/suspense novels that I am addicted to, not for a piece about life in an upper class Chinese household published in 1946.

Madame Wu has managed the Wu household since her mother-in-law's "retirement" on her fortieth birthday. On her own 40th birthday, however, although she intends to acquire a concubine for her husband to handle those duties, she has no intention of stepping down as CEO.

She understands that her oldest son's wife is fully engaged in bearing and raising children and has neither the time nor the inclination toward management. She is less aware that another reason is that she simply doesn't want to give up control of her world. As she continues to make the decisions which direct the lives of all sixty or so people in her world, things began to go subtly, then more seriously, wrong.

Then everything changes. She invites into her controlled and tranquil environment a stranger, a foreigner, a priest who comes to tutor her third son in English. Madame Wu is intrigued and joins the study and her entire vision of the world changes. When he is killed by street thugs, she is summoned to his deathbed and he charges her to "Feed my lambs." His lambs turn out to be the fifteen or so girls that he has rescued from certain death after they have been abandoned by their families as undesireable mere females. Madame Wu takes them home and installs them in the Buddhist temple on the grounds of the Wu home. Even so, the story is not about the inclusion of these girls in the household, it is about the changes in Madame Wu herself.

In many respects it is a somewhat transparent Christian metaphor. Brother Andre is the Christ figure and the transformation of Madame Wu is from a view from the perspective of tradition and her own personal judgement to that of individual well-being of each person within her sphere of influence.

Granting that my experience of Buck's work is limited, the two I have read suggest that the condition of women in Chinese society is one of her persistent themes. Although The Good Earth is primarily the story of the rise and fall of Wang Lung and his family, the thread that always fascinated me is the story of his wife, O-Lan, purchased from slavery, the only kind of wife he could afford. This is placed at the far side of the range of society, the Wu family is the wealthiest and most influential family in their region, and in a different period, WWII rather than WWI, but Buck is deeply concerned with the lives of the women in both stories.

The Rope by Nevada Barr

A prequel to Barr's popular National Park series featuring National Park law enforcement ranger, Anna Pigeon, this is not Barr's strongest work. A friend and I were speculating that it may be an early writing that is only now being published.

This features a younger Anna on the run from NYC and theater after the death of her husband. Anna has taken on seasonal work at Glen Canyon. Her job, with housemate, Jenny Gorman, is cleaning up the human waste deposited by indifferent tourists in one of the most amazing settings on earth. Charming. I don't think I've ever lived anywhere that drew its water supply from that particular resevoir; I hope I haven't. The continual discussion of people poop was not pleasant - however accurate it may have been.

Barr does a brilliant job of giving the uninitiated (me, for example) a sense of the nature of the place. I've seen pictures, and that surface reality is amazing enough - sheer rock walls rising from an immense body of water. But from pictures it is hard to capture a sense of the depth and character of the place. I'm not particularly comfortable with large bodies of water, and I am more accustomed to naturally occuring lakes - or even partially artificial lakes like Lake Ponchartrain which is crossed by the longest bridge in the world. According to the wiki, the average depth of Lake Ponchartrain is 12 to 14 feet, and I believe I was once told that out under the middle of that bridge the depth of the water is 75 to 80 feet. The water in Glen Canyon is 7 to 8 hundred feet deep in places - and those places are not all "out in the middle." By the time she has finished, you get it.

Unfortunately, the whole thing seemed rather unfocused to me. Too many characters, too many plot twists, too many side issues which led nowhere. One of the most likeable characters is Anna's supervisor/partner/housemate, Jenny. Why did Barr make Jenny a lesbian? The fact that Jenny is a lesbian is not the problem, it is just that it truly does not contribute to the plot at all and requires a great deal of otherwise unnecessary discussion and explanation. Barr works it in, sort of, but there were simpler ways to accomplish the tasks that this sideline addressed.

Oh well, a lesser effort from Barr is still better than many people's best.

Slayride by Dick Francis

This was a very cold story. No doubt, part of that was the psychological effect of the Norwegian setting, but when the first attempt on the hero's life involves dumping him out of a small boat into the fjord, you know it is going to be a cold one. The title is not one of his greatest. One of the people killed is strapped to a sled and pushed down a slope and over the cliff above the fjord.

David Cleveland is neither unduly depressed nor does he pursue teenage girls. I like this change, which began in Smokescreen but the titles do not make me happy.

A British jockey riding in Norway disappears and so do the gate receipts for the race day - all this serves as a reminder of how close together everything in Europe is - it's a day trip.

Cleveland is an investigator for the Jockey Club in England and goes to Norway at their request (in response to a request from the Norwegian Jockey Club) to try and find the missing man. He does - and a whole lot of trouble besides. The mystery, including the murders, has very little to do with horse racing, but everyone involved is connected to racing.

In spite of the differences noted and the setting this seemed almost formulaic. Maybe it is time to let them rest and read other stuff for a while.

Smokescreen by Dick Francis

This is the one about the movie actor. It is also largely set in South Africa. The title is, I think, a rather strained play on the fact that the hero/detective is a screen actor and the fact that much of the action is orchestrated by the bad to hide what he is up to.

Horse racing is definitely a side issue although it does occupy a large share of pages. A friend of action movie hero Edward Lincoln has inherited a string of race horses in South Africa from her sister. Without explanation, the horses have all started to perform poorly and she asks Link to just run out to Jo'burg and see what is going on - and to please do it before her own death from cancer.

In South Africa, Link finds himself suddenly accident-prone, and no mere dropping teacups. A microphone electrocutes the woman who has just taken it out of his hand. A bump on the head down in a gold mine leaves him stranded in the dark as the day's blasting is about to take place. The final attempt on his life abandons the appearance of accident and resets the scenario of his latest film, which closes the plot loop neatly.

Even so, Link breaks the "depressed hero" pattern pretty well. We do learn that his youngest child suffered traumatic brain damage in an accident as an infant. Still, his family seems happy and satisfied with their life away from the glitter of wherever the British version of Hollywood is located - and Link, himself, is more than happy to get home to them when he can.

Two to Conquer by Marion Zimmer Bradley

I picked this one up off the Freebie table, even though I suspected there was probably a copy on my shelf at home -- there was. But it's all right, the dog ate this one and I still had one so I could finish reading it. I should apologize to the person who started the Freebie table; I'm sure she didn't have dog food in mind.

The big surprise (besides the dog's taste for literature) is that I have never read it before. I would have sworn that I had read all of Darkover, except the "ands." It is set in the time of Varzil the Good, apparently before the arrival (second arrival?) of the Terrans. The second half of it is about a terran doppelganger fetched to increase the odds for the di Asturiens, hence the title's keyword "two."

It is a curious mixture of technology and mysticism. The reader is clued in to the fact that human society on Darkover arrived in one of the "lost" colony ships of centuries past. Most identifiable "high tech" is credited to the workings of the masters of "laran" - psi powers which cover a wide range of potential - including the creation of radioactive dust, napalm, aircars, and identifying and bringing through time and space a doppelganger from distant earth - who was conveniently out of circulation at the time being incarcerated in stasis for the rest of his natural(?) life. A distant earth of which the Darkovans are completely ignorant.

This story illuminates one of the critical periods in the history of Darkover. Later in its history there are frequent references to "the Compact" which forbids the use of a weapon which does not bring its wielder into mortal danger himself. That sort of limits them to swords, knives, and lances - and, come to think of it, I don't recall the use of arrows - although those are a pretty natural development for that technological level - and it also begs the question of hunting game for meat - swords would seem to be seriously inefficient at bringing down large ungulates for dinner. Oh well.

We also actually meet Varzil the Good, who becomes a figure of legend in stories later in the planet chronology. We also meet the Sisterhood of the Sword and there are allusions to the later formation of the Order of Renunciates into which they morphed.

Bradley, herself, always denied a planetary chronology and sequence for Darkover. I read somewhere that she said that it was her universe, and they were her characters and if she would do with them as she pleased - regardless of plaintive wails for logic. I admire her independence. Heinlein's "Future History" timeline always made me rather uncomfortable.

Bonecrack by Dick Francis

This is a fairly grim little number even for Dick Francis. In point of fact, the hero takes rather less of a beating than most Francis heroes - a beating early on, and a broken collarbone later - lots of intimidation, of course. The problem for me may be that so many horses are killed - four, I think. A bunch of guys kill each other, too - but they were seriously bad guys, even a writer of fiction wouldn't want to leave standing at the end.

The title refers to the chief bad's chosen method of intimidation. He doesn't kill the horses outright, he anesthetizes them, then breaks a leg - thereby forcing the owner, trainer, or someone to put the horse down. When that doesn't work, Neil himself becomes the target; in his case, no anesthetic - and the barrel of a gun as a back-up, not to mention a threat against the favorite in the big race, and against the stables as well.

Another departure, this one is about flat racing not steeplechase. I'm not sure that had a significant impact on the story. If the rules and what have you for flat racing are different from those for steeplechase, I really couldn't tell from the story. Yes, I do know the fundamental difference between the two types of racing - in flat racing they run around a track, in steeplechase they run around a track and jump over things. Still, I don't think setting the story in steeplechase instead of flat racing would have changed anything much.

Frankly, I don't think Neil Griffon is one of Francis's more engaging heroes - but at least he doesn't lust after a teenaged girl. He shares with the others a stubbornness that does not allow him to cave in to blackmail, intimidation, or physical violence, but somehow he never quite seems to come alive as most of the clan do. He isn't as depressed as many of them, but he seems somehow to disassociate from events around him. Another factor of the character's development is the translation of his own disastrous relationship with his father into concern for a young boy who is the victim of a truly catastrophic father/son dynamic. Griffon's thoughts about the boy and his circumstances are clearly and explicitly delineated, but they don't quite seem to make the leap into observable feelings.

Still, it is Dick Francis, perhaps not his best, but still better than just about anyone else out there.

Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott

I discovered Anne Lamott quite by accident quite a few years ago. One of her books was on a sale table at a new Barnes and Noble somewhere in the general vicinity of my sister's house. It was one of those sales where you had to pick up a certain number to take full advantage of the sale. It was her book on writing, Bird by Bird, and I loved the title. Loved the book, too. Enough to buy several others of hers, including this one. I don't think I ever got around to this one, because I started with one of her novels - and kept getting interrupted. I think my daughter read it, though.

Forward ten or fifteen years. Sunday morning the preacher was gone - off to somewhere or other for the birth of a grandchild - and the DS preached. I think DS stands for District Superintendent which sounds to me more like public utilities than anything ecclesiastical, but I didn't grow up in this denomination. Be that as it may, her name is Jane and she preached a right workmanlike sermon, certainly had more meat and metaphor than our regular preacher. He is lively and entertaining, but I frequently suspect that those attributes primarily serve to cover a certain lack of depth.

And by now you are surely wondering where this is headed. The DS actually cited Lamott, this particular book, in her sermon. I remembered - and looked for the book - couldn't find it - I love my kindle.

She discusses how she came to faith and how it has saved her repeatedly. This is no fluffy, fantasy "upbeat" little story - this is real stuff. She tells how she had to learn the lesson over and over again. She explains how and why she fought against it - and some of those episodes are pretty grim.

She explains that her two basic prayers are "help me, help me, help me" and "thank you, thank you, thank you." One of my favorite bits was her feeling that Christ was pursuing her - like a little stray kitten. She was alcoholic, drug addicted, and barely functional, but she knew that once she let that kitten in, it would never leave and her whole life would have to change.

She makes clear that her conversion was no instantaneous miraculous happily-ever-after. She still had battles to fight with her self-destructiveness. Battles that had to be fought over and over again until she began to tell herself the truth.

This is a powerful piece of writing, but not for those who find inspiration in the usual sanctimony of Christian writing.

The Secundus Papyrus by Albert Noyer

Murder and conspiracy in fifth century Italy - Ravenna. I wonder why Ravenna. Possibly because, although it had political significance in the period, it was not the center of the Roman universe as Rome was, making it easier to create fiction in the setting. That, however, is total speculation. Perhaps Mr. Noyer actually visited Ravenna and came away completely captivated. I could understand that - although for me it wasn't Ravenna. For me it is Venice - how conventional. I don't think I would ever have the chutzpah to write about Venice - in any period of history. In five years of never turning down an opportunity to visit Venice, I never failed - even on my last of countless visits - to see things that I had never seen before -- an amazing place.

Meanwhile, back in Ravenna --- I read the sequel to this book first, maybe I shouldn't call the second in what looks to be a series of murder mysteries a sequel because aside from continuing characters, the stories are quite independent. It's fun to "watch" a 21st century writer imagine crime detection without the forensic tools that are the foundation of most mysteries set in the present. No DNA or fingerprints, no autopsy or tox screens, no phone records or security videos. Not to mention the fact that the "detectives" themselves are working in a mindset far removed from today's analytical world-view.

In this case, the detectives, Getorius and his wife, Arcadia, have the advantage of being a physician and physician-in-training. Getorius longs to dissect a human cadaver to investigate some of the theories of the revered Galen that don't seem to play out in Getorius's own experience with real patients. This, of course, is strictly forbidden by church law, upon pain of excommunication, banishment, death, and other generally unpleasant consequences. At one point in the story, he is left with the body of an indigent sailor on his hands and succumbs to temptation, but quickly retreats.

The political/religious situation at this point in history is fascinating. The Roman church is gaining power, but it has serious competition from any number of other versions of Christianity. I wish Noyer had managed to explain a little more of the fundamental differences between them - of course, I'm not really interested in a serious and lengthy discussion of the development of the early church, just a little more background on the doctrinal differences that created such divisions.

Rat Race by Dick Francis

Another flying story. This time we have Matt Shore, a commercial pilot whose career who has been in a downward spiral ever since he resigned from a command at BOAC at the request of his wife who objected to his frequent absences. Naturally, she left him anyway. So he has progressed in a negative direction to lesser carriers, to gun-running in Africa, to crop dusting, finally to working for a small air-taxi service largely engaged in carrying jockeys, trainers, and horse owners to the races. Bet you were wondering how Francis was going to make the racing connection this time.

Matt's depression isn't as severe as Gene Hawkins, who had taken to sleeping with a loaded pistol in case he decided to go ahead and kill himself in the night. Matt just hangs around a dilapidated trailer on the airfield and calculates how little money he has left after he pays the alimony every month and being thankful that he and his wife had never had children.

He is dragged back to life in spite of himself by some of the engaging people he encounters as he ferries them to and from racecourses all over Europe. One of them, of course, is a young girl, the sister of the most famous steeplechase jockey in the country. Matt is 34, Nancy is 19. Another young person who makes a difference to Matt is another Matthew, the ten year old nephew and heir of a peer. The nephew does his best to protect his uncle, who is a man of great wealth and sweetness of character - and very little intelligence or discernment - from those who would take advantage of him.

The criminal enterprise of the plot is truly perverse - and must, I think, take advantage of some of the areas of the British economy which are not tied up and gifted to the 1% in this country.

Enquiry by Dick Francis

It is hard to round up enough superlatives to adequately discuss Dick Francis. Reading them back to back this way, though, I am discovering some patterns that I had never been aware of before.

I think I did mention in one recent post, Francis's men are one depressed bunch of guys. Kelly Hughes is no exception. He is despised by his family, a bunch of working class Welshmen, for forgetting his place and becoming something besides a hired hand on a dirt farm. Not only that - he went to university - none other than the prestigious London School of Economics. Sort of the reverse of Henry Grey's situation (Flying Finish). Then to compound the disaster of his life, his wife and baby daughter were killed in a car crash. A lot of baggage.

Still when he and the trainer he rides for are set up and "warned off" racing by a kangaroo court, Kelly becomes angry rather than more depressed and with the daughter of the self-important trainer sets out to figure out what is really going on.

Another observation that has gradually grown on me is that with the sweet young things that step in to help these depressed men - young is the keyword. Gene Hawkins in Blood Sport is nearly forty - and ends up promising to wait for his boss's sixteen year old daughter to turn twenty-one. Kelly Hughes isn't quite that old and Roberta isn't quite that young, but she is young enough that, as a twelve year old, she had fallen for him when he went to work as a jockey for her father, so we are talking about seven or eight years age difference at least. I'm going to have to keep an eye on this one.

Sky Coyote by Kage Baker

It's an interesting basic premise: time travel (with some of the usual limitations) has been discovered and operatives are sent to rescue priceless and irreplaceable artifacts from the past - sort of like Connie Willis's To Say Nothing of the Dog. Eventually, these rescued artifacts come to include culture and tradition. The operatives themselves are cyborgs created from rescued ("recruited") children. The main character was the child of a French cave painter and should have been slaughtered with the rest of his family when some other tribal barbarians overran their home. These cyborgs are essentially immortal and proceed through the centuries toward the point in the future when the whole program began.

The main part of the story has to do with the "rescue" of an entire village of sixteenth century Northern California natives by persuading them to voluntarily decamp with the immortals and mortals of the future to one of their hidden sites - where apparently they become the servant class; after all, since they aren't made immortal, the servants eventually die and since the immortals don't want their servants distracted by a bunch of rug rats -- well, you get the picture. The vehicle of persuasion is our hero, transformed into their god, Sky Coyote, who talks and acts a lot like a second-rate stand-up comedian - bada boom.

I'm afraid the whole thing seemed somewhat diffuse and pointless to me. The "ancient cultures" are clear parodies of present day society, funny enough, but tiresome after a while. Nothing of significance is resolved. The characters and story lines are unsubtle and, having slapped the reader in the face with some snarky commentary on our society, they just sort of flounder away into nothing much. Many potentially interesting directions are sacrificed on the altar of a cheap laugh.

It kept me reading - it was entertaining - but I kept hoping that something would happen. There were hints at this, that, or the other - but all the firecrackers just fizzled out. I fear that the intent was some sort of subtle high-level critique of 21st century America, but it was certainly not subtle and not particularly insightful either. Sorry if it is intended to be the first of a series with good old facilitator Joseph moving from episode to episode exposing our own failings and fallacies, because, if so, he will be moving on without me.

Forfeit by Dick Francis

I was so accustomed to just adding another book to the list, that I forgot that I was caught up - and had promised myself that I was going to stay caught up. School is back in session, so the pace will inevitably slow down, but I did finish this a couple of days ago. At this point, although school is going none of the performance groups that I belong to are rehearsing yet, so I have a few more days.

This one I remember - even though I didn't recognize the title. The hero is a newspaperman who writes for a paper more interested in sensation than straight news. His wife is almost completely paralyzed from polio - remember, these were written in the sixties when, although polio was no longer an issue, the victims of polio were still around.

A bad has appeared from overseas with an almost perfect scheme for cheating the betting public. This is the second time that Francis has opened with a suicide. In Nerve, a jockey shoots himself in front of the crowd before a race. This time a sports columnist falls from a window convincingly enough for the coroner to believe it, but not enough for James Tyrone.

Ty takes some fairly heavy damage, but the crisis comes when the heavy threatens to turn off the breathing apparatus keeping his wife alive.

The title refers to the scheme, which has horses touted for big races to encourage betting before the actual race day - only to have the horses not show up to race.

"L" is for Lawless by Sue Grafton

I had definitely not read this one before, and I'm pretty sure I hadn't read the previous one either.

Grafton had to reach a bit for this title. Granted, we were dealing with a group of crooks and a bank robbery from a couple of generations past, the particulars clearly indicating that there was no honor among this bunch of thieves, a pretty lawless crowd, but to have it all come down to a family name - now that was pretty cheap.

Maybe I've been reading them too fast, but this one was just not particularly satisfying to me. Kinsey comes across as pretty ineffectual, manipulated by the bads at all turns. She does come up with the critical clue at the end, but simply gives it away.

In the other matter I'm tracking, she doesn't kill anyone - and never has any opportunity for dalliance. Speaking of which, Henry's brother, William, and Rosie actually get married.

Flash and Bones by Kathy Reichs

I just "flashed" on the forensic anthropology grad student and former stand partner of mine who put me on to Kathy Reichs many years ago. Thanks, Amanda, wherever you are.

NASCAR is the setting and a new man has entered the scene. Ryan hasn't totally disappeared - but his presence in this one was only a matter of emails and a couple of phone calls. Charlie Hunt is still in Charlotte, but was working a big case - and according to Katy, Tempe's daughter, has been seen escorting other women around town. I still have trouble accepting a character named "Cotton," though - just a little too southern. And there was all that weirdness about her almost ex-husband and his buxom young fiancee's wedding - it seemed to me far more implausible than the murders.

Reichs does always manage to come up with creative ways to get Tempe almost killed, I wonder if there is a little hostility going on there.

As for the title - not my favorite - the pun is just a little too strained. Good story, though.

Blood Sport by Dick Francis

Finished on 8/20. (Note: that date matches the posting date!)

And I am caught up - if I can get all this posted before some glitch comes down the line. Classes started today - so I almost achieved my goal of getting this caught up before school started. Now if I can just stay on top of it. I'm not taking classes - but I have signed on for three evenings a week of rehearsals - some people never learn.

This one is set largely in the United States and I remembered parts of it quite clearly. European super stallions are being sold to US breeders but are hijacked on the road before they arrive at the new owner's stables or disappear into the mountains along with all the other horses from a mysteriously broken corral. The other horses are recovered but not the expensive stallion.

The first mystery is why they are being stolen, since their value at stud is minimal without their names. Another is why was one of the members of the syndicate owning the most recent missing horse targeted for murder.

Through a friend, "civil servant" Gene Hawkins is asked to go to the States and see if he can find the horse.

He decodes the crimes and survives with rather less than the usual malicious physical abuse that Francis dishes out to his heroes, but he hardly needs it because he is sunk to the point of suicide in clinical depression. Hawkins is the most depressed in a series of depressed heroes. He sleeps with his gun under his pillow in case he decides to finish himself off in the middle of the night. Henry Grey in Flying Finish wasn't exactly depressed, he was simply so detached that it was hard to tell the difference. Sid Halley, of course, had the wreck of his hand and the end of his racing career to blame. Daniel Roke in For Kicks felt trapped by his life and responsibility to his younger siblings. All of them rediscover life in the course of their stories, except Hawkins. And I suppose that he does, too, in a way - it isn't really that his depression is lifted, he just decides that his life debt to someone else compells him to continue living. Depressing.

Cetaganda by Lois McMaster Bujold

Finished on 8/19.

Not as much fun as Young Miles, perhaps, but still worth the reread.

Miles and Ivan are sent as envoys to the funerary festivities honoring the Cetagandan Empress. The Cetagandans are extremely aggressive and long- time enemies of Barrayar, the history of their hostilities going back generations.

Although highly advanced technologically, the Cetagandans are virtually the direct opposite of the rational and egalitarian Betans. The castes of the world define their society and their castes are defined by a program of genetic engineering. Needless to say, a power struggle in this setting is quite complex.

Miles and Ivan are set up to be patsies in a scheme to throw the Cetagandan Empire and the Barrayaran Empire into a war and allow the conspirators to take over the breeding system which would give them ultimate control. Unfortunately for their plans, Miles, as usual, simply refuses to play the part that was scripted for him.

Flying Finish by Dick Francis

Finished on 8/18.

Another main character in need of a new interest in life. Henry Grey is the heir to a title and really doesn't care - about that or much of anything else. He chucks his office job with a bloodstock agency and goes to work as groom for an outfit which transports horses by air.

The one thing that he does care about is flying and he spends his weekends flying light aircraft - and, since he has gotten commercial licenses, running the occasional charter for the owner of the flight school and airport.

That is, flying was all he cared about until he makes a delivery of some horses to Milan.

This is one of his most apt titles yet - at the end, although seriously injured (aren't Francis's heroes always seriously injured?) he must fly a multi-engine transport clear across Europe back to England.

Odds Against by Dick Francis

Finished on 8/17.

This has always been one of my favorites. Sid Halley is a great character; no wonder Francis brought him back three more times.

Sid was a champion jockey until a fall which left him with a useless hand - stepped on by a couple thousand pounds of horse. Understandably depressed, he can't bring himself to take any real interest in much of anything until the father of his estranged wife steps in to try and bring him back to life.

The mission is to save a race course which is being systematically brought down so the bads can buy it and develop the property.

"K" is for Killer by Sue Grafton

Finished on 8/16.

Kinsey is working late and ends up answering the door to a case which apparently keeps her from getting any sleep for the duration, no wonder she caught the flu.

It was okay, the ending a little contrived. But she didn't kill anyone herself, although she certainly makes sure the bad gets dead.

The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss

Finished on 8/15.

Our hero, Kvothe, takes a term off from the university and goes out to see the world. Since the well is poisoned against him to the point that he cannot find a patron to support him either as a student or a musician, a friend finds him work in a far country.

In the manner of high fantasy, he slays the dragon, cavorts with the faerie queen, and has any number of adventures. He even makes some progress on discovering the murderers of his family.

Excellently done, but depressing - is nothing ever going to work out for him?

"J" is for Judgement by Sue Grafton

Finished on 8/11.

The insurance company that fired Kinsey a couple of books ago has called her back in to find a guy who committed suicide five years earlier - but has been spotted alive and well in Mexico. The insurance company has just paid out a half million on a life insurance policy and is understandably upset about all this.

A number of people are upset - after all, he and his partner set up a ponzi scheme which bilked any number of the good citizens of Santa Teresa of their life savings.

This one takes some odd twists before it all plays out, but Kinsey didn't kill anyone.

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

Finished on 8/10.

This is a reread - because the second book of the trilogy has been released, and, after reading a few pages, I realized that I didn't remember enough of book one to go straight on.

It is one of those massive 900 to 1000 page fantasy novels. I usually avoid them, especially when they are set up to be part of a multiple, but I really trust the judgment of the student who recommended it in the first place.

It was worth the reread.

Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins

Finished on 8/8.

If The Hunger Games was YA, this is YYA, maybe even children's. The hero is eleven and he and his baby sister fall through a dryer in the basement of their NYC apartment building into a world beneath the surface.

There they discover a strange and wonderful world with giant bats and cockroaches and rats and a strange race of people. Naturally our hero saves the Underland from certain disaster - and rescues his father who fell through several years earlier.

Imager by L. E. Modesitt

Finished on 8/7.

I certainly liked this better than the Recluce book that I read. The character was more consistent and the plot far less repetitive.

Imagers make things using their minds and are deeply suspect - although highly valued - in their society. In some countries in their world, they are considered criminals.

Our hero has forsaken the family wool import/export business and taken up an apprenticeship as a painter of portraits (a different guild from painters of landscapes). When his master is killed, he is out of a job and too old to start over, but some incidents have led him to suspect that he may have the gift necessary to be an imager. Of course, he does - and advances rapidly, in spite of repeated assassination attempts.

I really hope that further books in the series will continue to feature the same character.

For Kicks by Dick Francis

Finished on 8/5.

In some ways this one seemed a little slower than I expect from Francis, but it certainly had its moments.

Some of the stewards of British steeplechasing go to Daniel Roke, an Australian breeder and trainer, asking him to go undercover to investigate suspected tampering. They figure that he will be unknown in England and not suspect. He has felt somewhat trapped in his business since he took it over after the deaths of his parents in order to support his three younger siblings. Hence the title, the pay offered is good - so he takes it on "for kicks."

He is sent in as a groom with an air of dishonesty, and ends up uncovering a truly perverse scheme for fixing horse races. And, of course, nearly manages to get himself killed in the process.

"I" is for Innocent by Sue Grafton

Finished on 8/4.

The initial murder is pretty gruesome - a woman is shot in the eye through the peephole in her front door. Her husband is charged with the murder but is acquitted. Five years later, her first husband still believes that the guy did it and wants the case reopened - going for civil penalties because of double jeopardy.

The first private detective on the case has a heart attack and dies and Kinsey enters the scene. She finds odd discrepancies in the original detective's investigation and a vast cast of potential murderers.

In a scene rather similar to the dumpster scene in "A," she does blow away the bad in the end.

"H" is for Homicide by Sue Grafton

Finished on 8/4.

The basic business is insurance fraud. Kinsey ends up undercover without backup in an auto insurance scam business.

The next batch are going to be brief - because I really want to get caught up!

By the way, she still didn't kill anyone.

Emily of New Moon by L. M. Montgomery

Finished on 8/2.

Well, Emily will never take the place of Anne of Green Gables. It is difficult to pinpoint the exact reason: both are orphans taken in reluctantly, although Emily is with family; they are both imaginative and lead their friends into some crazy scrapes.

The setting is also PEI, and Montgomery makes every part of the island sound positively idyllic.

Emily just doesn't seem to stand out or up or whatever like Anne does. Emily would never have dyed her hair green - although she does cut herself bangs.

"G" is for Gumshoe by Sue Grafton

Finished on 7/31.

This is the seventh, and so far, Grafton is doing quite well at making her story fit the preselected title. This suddenly reminded me of John D. Macdonald's Travis McGee titles - all those colors, 21 of them - not to mention more than fifty other books. Okay, add him to the list.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, this is about a Grafton book. The gumshoe is tough, macho dude Dietz (Robert?) I'm sure his given name has been mentioned, but he is so macho that it is seldom used). Actually, Dietz was introduced, although neither we nor Kinsey met him face-to-face, in an earlier book in the series - I think it was "A." This time he is very much a presence as he is hired to be Kinsey's bodyguard after an unhappy convict confides his plan to "get" the judge, prosecutor, defense attorney, and primary witness against him (Kinsey) to a police informant in prison.

One of his hitmen succeeds in killing the judge and the rest go into high security mode - enter Dietz.

In the meantime, Kinsey is trying to carry out an investigation of her own, unrelated to the hit list. This takes her out and about and, naturally, puts her in the sights of another killer.

She still hasn't killed anyone. I'm beginning to be concerned that I allowed someone to put their bias over on me, although there are still nineteen books to go. Or will be, I think Grafton is up to "W."

Spider Bones by Kathy Reichs

Finished on 7/30.

In case you, like I, thought that spiders didn't have bones - Spider is a name. I'm not sure he is a character, because he is dead at the beginning of the story and has been for many years - or has he? A fairly fresh corpse found in Canada is identified as a man who supposedly died in Vietnam in 1968.

The background is the military operations for identifying and returning the bodies of MIAs. The main laboratory is in Hawaii and Tempe (and, one assumes, Reichs herself) worked for them for a period some years earlier.

In other news, Tempe's daughter Katy is with her in Hawaii as a change of scene after her more-than-a-friend is killed in a Taliban ambush of a humanitarian convoy. And Ryan shows up (the precipitating murder took place in his bailiwick) with his daughter, Lily, a recovering(?) drug addict. And they are all staying in the same house - predictable fireworks between the daughters, not so much between Tempe and Ryan.

Nerve by Dick Francis

Finished on 7/29.

Francis does a very nice line in titles. In this one a jockey, Rob Finn, who is beginning to gain a reputation as someone who can be put up on the worst mounts because he is utterly fearless, is set up and made to appear to have lost his nerve. This he proceeds to prove to be utterly untrue by tracking and dealing with a vicious and ruthless racing insider.

Francis also gives his character a great deal of depth beyond the racing setting. He is the complete outsider in a family of musicians. This certainly telegraphs that he is determined to go his own way regardless of a level of pressure under which many of his colleagues have collapsed - even to the point of suicide.

Dead Cert by Dick Francis

Finished on 7/27.

Seemed like a good time to reread these. A few weeks ago I reread Shattered and remembered that I hadn't read any of them for years.

So, back to the beginning. This doesn't seem to show any of the "first book" hesitations that sometimes appear in first novels of series, but then, technically, this isn't the first of a series - it is just Francis's first novel. Except the four books featuring Sid Halley, all of Francis's books stand alone. There is the common background of horse racing, but characters don't repeat. He wrote 38 of them - in partnership with his wife for many years, until her death, and the last four with his son, Felix, who, I believe, is continuing the "non-series." Has to beat teaching high school physics.

Here we have Alan York, an amateur steeplechase jockey from Rhodesia (now known as Zimbabwe). His father has sent him to England (with a string of horses) to manage the London end of the family business which conveniently leaves him enough free time to race. He stumbles onto a system of fraud which has cost the life of his friend and mentor.

Setting the pattern that I seem to recall from Francis's books, Alan comes very close to losing his own life in his pursuit of his friend's killers. Have to love the passage where he escapes from them cross-country on a horse as the bad guys chase him in taxicabs.