"A" is for Alibi by Sue Grafton

Finished on 7/10.

My sister bought "A" through "O" for kindle at some ridiculous price - like $1.99 apiece. Time to reread. I'm not sure how many of these I actually read, I know I didn't get all the way to "O." At some point, a colleague pointed out that they all ended the same way - with Kinsey blowing someone away in the last scene. So I shall consider this in the nature of research - is that an accurate generalization? - because I simply don't remember.

I do remember that someone was really unhappy about the fact that she had slept with the guy who turned out to be the bad guy and subsequently was shot. That was in this one - sorry, anyone who happens to read this who has not actually read this book. The dumpster scene is one of the bits that I have remembered about Grafton's books for all these years - and it was in the very first one.

Another point for research: according to the wiki, Grafton decided to write the series and chose the titles - for all of them - first. As readers here may have noticed, I have a thing about titles. Will the twenty-six "crime words" actually be integral to the stories? Or will they just be catchy titles justified by a line or two here and there.

For this one - the mystery does hang on the alibi. And, yes, she does sleep with the guy and shoot him in the last scene, however, this is the first book - so it is a little early to declare a pattern given my convenient memory (or lack thereof).

I suppose I will also find out how many of them I can read consecutively before having to read something else.

Iufaa (Part II) by Jenna Zamie

Finished on 7/9.

I had expected more of the same in Part II - not so much. Iufaa matures and begins to act rather than being acted upon. The ending sections are very powerful.

Iufaa's self-sacrifice is stunning, he loses everything - but, thank you, Jenna, for not killing the cat.

Iufaa (Part I) by Jenna Zamie

Finished on 7/7.

That is just a working title, I believe; it is the name of the main character.

I was reading this chapter by chapter as she finished it, but I was finding that frustrating - I tend to read in huge chunks, and having to wait for the next chapter was driving me crazy. It was finished, and I had finished writing my comps - it was time to read it through.

This is an excellent piece of work. The character is appealing, the dialogue is natural, the story is intriguing, and she needs to get on with getting it published.

It is clear that she is familiar with the fantasy genre but she doesn't fall to the cliches. "The stream" which is the source of magic and the mechanism which conveys Iufaa from world to world is not like anything that I have read anywhere else. And her non-human characters are wonderful.

Genesis (KJV)

Finished on 7/6.

Not much to say about this one. I expect everyone is pretty familiar with the plot. I have always liked the King James for the beauty of the writing and the NIV for the clarity, but lately I have been hearing reading from a lot of other translations - or paraphrases. So I thought I would go back to my favorites and see if I need to reevaluate.

I'm not sure which of the more recent versions are full translations - and I am extremely leery of simplifications and paraphrases. Paraphrases remind me of the Gossip Game (my daughter informs me that they sometimes called it "Telephone," where the leader whispers something to the person next to him or her who in turn whispers it to the next person, and everyone gets a laugh at how mangled the message is when the last person tells the group what he heard.

It has seemed to me that as I hear the newer versions and automatically convert the text to the KJV in my head that a lot of nuance is lost in what I am hearing.

Sepulchre by Kate Mosse

Finished on 7/3.

I don't think I am going to bother with Mosse any more. I probably wouldn't have bothered with this one, but someone gave it to me and there it was on the shelf in the bathroom and it made a change from working sudoku.

I recently accused Georgette Heyer of being overly fond of some of her characters. After reading this one by Mosse, I think I may owe Heyer an apology.

This story is similar to her earlier one, Labyrinth, in many respects. It is set in two time periods. The young woman in the contemporary story must discover all the connections with the earlier story. They are set in the same general region of France. And - she has recycled characters from her earlier book - unnecessarily in my opinion, since the two stories are completely unrelated.

Of course, having created an 800-year old character, I suppose she thought it would be wasteful to use him in only one story. Since he was 800 years old, I suppose he had time to become the expert on everything, but his background is not discussed in this story - unless one has read the other, you don't really know who he is - and it really isn't necessary to know - so why not just create a new character? There is even less justification for recycling the archaeologist from the contemporary portion of Labyrinth. It is completely pointless.

I love a good creepy, supernatural story - ghosts and all - but the supernatural elements of this one are so diffuse that none of it makes much sense.

False Prophet by Faye Kellerman

Finished on 6/26.

The central character in the mystery is the owner of a spa and the daughter of an old school movie star. The plot involves all sorts of family weirdness. That is set against tensions in the Decker household. Rina is pregnant and Decker's daughter Cindy is having issues with that.

The running story in these is often more interesting that the mystery itself, this time the mystery is so convoluted that it was almost hard to follow - unusual for Kellerman.

The Rainbow Abyss, Book 1 of Sun-Cross by Barbara Hambley

Finished on 6/25

This had been my "sitting outside with the dog" book, so it has taken a while to finish. I don't remember when I started it.

I'm pretty sure I've read some of Hambley's fantasy before - but none of it comes to mind at the moment. I suppose I could go look for a list in the from of the book, but that is out in the den - and I don't feel like trekking out there at the moment. I believe that I was introduced to her as a fantasy writer and was surprised to find that she wrote murder mysteries.

This is fantasy, pleasant but not all that special. Wizards are a persecuted minority, and that is the driver of most of the action as student and master dodge the bad guys. The rest is the master's construct which allows them to contact a far universe - one where magic has been eliminated.

In the finale of this book, the student goes through the portal and the back of the book informs me that he lands in Nazi Germany and at this point, I'm not up to dealing with a WWII fantasy. Maybe after I reread all her 19th century New Orleans murder mysteries.

Fonduing Fathers by Julie Hyzy

Finished on 6/24

Something of a departure for the White House Chef series - this time Ollie is investigating the twenty-five year old murder of her own father. Not nearly as much sturm und drang at the White House, either. Still all kinds of security issues and that sort of thing. Tensions in the White House seem to be down - Ollie is putting up with her rival chef who is the First Family's personal chef - as opposed to the White House Chef, who does affairs of state, etc. She is also getting along with the touchy protocol chief - or sensitivity chief. And her affair with Agent Gavin is flourishing.

The story opens with the question of how her father was buried at Arlington National Cemetary in spite of a dishonorable discharge from the army. I admit, I thought the answer to that one was pretty obvious, but it took everyone in the story down to the big reveal in the next to last chapter.

I guess Hyzy technically worked the title into the story. It was about Ollie's search for answers regarding her father, and she and First Son and aspiring chef, 9-year old Josh, make fondue for a family supper.

The Cybelene Conspiracy by Albert Noyer

Finished on 6/23

Heading backward in history - the last one was medieval England, this one is early Christian Italy - about 400 to 500 AD - excuse me, that should be CE. I guess some people are offended by Anno Domini, fortunately not offended enough to want to change the calendar to some baseline not associated with religion. I'm not sure what the kick-off point is for the Hebrew calendar --- well, now I have some idea from a quick scan of the Wiki. Apparently it dates from the Biblical beginning of the world - or a year or so before that. It seems that there is considerable debate among Talmudic scholars. Since the Christian calendar is off by several years one way or the other, I suppose the whole thing is academic anyway. I frequently tell math students that we do some things the way we do because that's the way that we do them. It works and everybody knows what everybody else is talking about - so just get used to it. One of the real math professors stopped by my office one day last term and asked me (me?) why we rationalize denominators - I told her it was so I would not have wasted so much time making my developmental students learn to do it that way. Apologies to non-math nerds.

But I digress, anybody surprised? This was a lot of fun. The main character, Getorius, is a physician and his wife, Arcadia, is training with him - she wants to open a women's clinic in Ravenna. Patients would come to him and describe their symptoms and you get to guess what the ailment actually is. He studies Galen obsessively and discusses everything in terms of "humors" and phlegm. I recognized diabetes, gout, kidney stones, and several others - not to mention the common cold, and the "there but for penicillin" injuries.

There is also a good bit of interesting background on the growing domination of the Roman Catholic church. I guess I had been rather conditioned to generally accept the RC discription of the early centuries of the church. There were a number of other Christian sects, as well as any number of pagan sects. In this period the Roman church was busily wiping out the competition.

The mystery is satisfyingly complex and comes to a most dramatic conclusion.

City of Fiends by Michael Jecks

Finished on 6/21

Who would have thought that the city of fiends was Exeter. I gather that this is simply the most recent in a very long series - wiki says thirty one novels about the former Knight Templar and his buddy. This one is somewhere in the Edwards - third, I think, early third. Third has just deposed Second and is reigning (at age 15 or so) under a regency.

The story centers around the gruesome murders of two women. Jecks points us at any number of potential murderers before the end. At times I thought it was almost too depressing to continue, but the story kept dragging me back.

Medieval England was not a nice place. Did I forget to mention the murder, rape, and pillage going on in the interests of an attempt to restore Edward II to the throne?

All of that gets tied in before the end, but the body count - if you include the murder, rape, and pillage stuff - is astounding - and includes several promising potential murderers.

Oh, well. This may be telling, but I can't resist - you have to love it when a writer so completely embraces the cliche. And - for those who survive, things work out well. And the little boy does get a puppy.

Too Big to Miss by Sue Ann Jaffarian

Finished on 6/19.

Another gimmick series. Cute, in an irritating way. Designed to appeal to the same sort of audience as her Ghost of Granny Apple books. The gimmick in these is that the accidental detective is fat. Been done - remember Nero Wolfe? He was so fat that he had to have Archie Goodwin to do all the running about for him while he tended his orchids and discussed menus with his chef, whose name I have forgotten at the moment - Fritz something? This woman merely scarfs junk food. Jaffarian apparently intends to redeem the open bias of ridiculing fat people by making her fat heroine's best friend (also fat) a black woman. Sorry, didn't work.

The fat girl thing is justified, perhaps, because the victim is the founder of their "fat and proud of it" group. Nothing wrong with being accepting of oneself, I'm no lightweight myself. Still, the story did not really depend on the fact that they were all proud of being overweight. It could have been any other sort of self-defined group just as well. I guess I resent it on my own behalf!

I rather doubt if I will read any more of them - I can find unadulterated fluff in other settings. Still, for those occasions calling for the reading of unadulterated fluff, it will serve. I didn't have any trouble finishing the book - the story itself was clever and entertaining.

And this may have given me another means of categorizing cozy mysteries. I am going to have to give the idea of the gimmick some thought.

New York Dead by Stuart Woods

Finished on 6/18.

On about page two, she falls from an eighth story window right at the feet of our hero, Stone Barrington. And the rest of the book is about whether or not she is dead or not.

Under the cover of a police procedural, this one is really grotesque. Seems that I remember that about Stuart Woods. I've read a few of his and liked them, but not well enough to go back to the beginning and read them through. I liked this one, liked the main character, but there are a number of folks on my reread list before him. Maybe I just don't like New York: too many people in too little space. "Give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above ---"

Blood Rites by Jim Butcher

Finished on 6/16.

Nope. Hadn't read this one, so I guess my extreme annoyance with the plethora of "left hangings" at the end of Death Masks might have been the reason I didn't continue with the series. This time he seemed to get more or less back on track - must have been complaints. Most of those loose ends are still hanging, but I prefer to have a reasonably solid story even if it means leaving those bits in the wind. I'm sure that Butcher will tie them off someday when he is short of a starting place for the next book.

Any plot action in this one pales before a twist in the back story. I hate to be cryptic in one of these posts, but for those who might be reading them, I really don't want to give this away. So - it involves one of the continuing characters, and is possibly the point on which the title of the book turns.

Go read it yourself. By the way, and this has nothing to do with the aforementioned twist, isn't Ivy just the coolest character ever? And did I mention that Mister has company - Harry has acquired a dog.

Cover Her Face by P. D. James

Finished on 6/13.

I'm not sure, but I think I first read P. D. James after seeing one of the stories on Mystery. Good stuff.

What is it with all these depressed detectives? Was Lord Peter Wimsey the pattern? Dalgliesh isn't as depressed as Inspector Morse, who seemed so depressed on television that I have never been seriously tempted to read the books - maybe someday - there was another one, I think, his name will come to me in the dead of night. Then there is Deborah Crombie's Duncan Kincaid - although he does seem to cheer up after he hooks up with Gemma. Did Lord Peter become happier after he and Harriet married? I guess Sayers has to go on the reread list. Then there is Jane Tennison - now that woman was depressed, but the series made me a life-long fan of Helen Mirren. Are British detectives more depressed than American detectives - I detect more research in my future.

This one has all the trappings of an English country house locked room mystery. And has the added advantage of having a victim that nobody much cares about. In addition, Dalgliesh himself rather falls for one of the members of the household. The wiki informs me that he is depressed because of the death of his wife (years before) in childbirth.

Oh well, everything comes out in the end, the orphaned child finds a good home, and we Americans are treated to yet another British village fete.

While googling, I discovered that James is a Baroness and a life peer in the House of Lords and that at age 92 is still living somewhere in England. She writes to the lifestyle of the minor aristocracy with legitimate authority.

The Sisterhood by Helen Bryan

Finished on 6/10.

One of my random purchases. It was all right. I enjoyed it. I wouldn't want to have paid full price for it.

It vaguely reminded me of the one-word title books by Kate Mosse, somehow made classier by leaving off the "the." Things happen centuries ago and can only be resolved in the present.

I'm not particularly crazy about the device. I don't mind the supernatural - there was a ghost in this one - but it is all a bit of a strain and requires relies to a ridiculous extent on coincidence.

The nuns of an obscure order in Spain are attacked by the inquisition because of their heretical beliefs but manage to send a crew to South America to establish a new convent. 450 years later a young woman shows up with the treasured signature medallion of the order, lost for all those years.

As I said, it was okay - probably a good beach read (as I understand such things, having spent very little time on beaches in my life). As you can also tell, the story didn't leave enough of an impression for me to remember much about it a month later - and it didn't make enough of an impact at the time to drive me to comment immediately - as some of my last few months worth of reading have.

Till the Butchers Cut Him Down by Marcia Muller

Finished on 6/8.

The woman does have a way with titles. This time a college friend(?) of Sharon shows up wanting her help.

He was an outsider and fundamentally a loser in college, but in the intervening years he has become a high pressure, high dollar turn-around expert - I'm not certain that is the correct phrase. What he does is take failing businesses and make them profitable - usually at the expense of many of the concerned parties. And someone wants to kill him - imagine that --

This one gets Sharon out of San Francisco for part of it, but the center of the action is the derelict Hunter's Point naval installation. I actually visited there once - before it was derelict. Muller obviously loves San Francisco; she frequently indulges in historical and descriptive discussions of the city and how it got the way it is. I have briefly visited the city on a couple of occasions, separated by about thirty years, but I certainly would not claim to know it. I have read a couple of novels set in my home area that offended me deeply by their ignorance. I hope that Muller's San Francisco is faithful to the original.

Last Car to Elysian Fields by James Lee Burke

Finished on 6/5

That may be my favorite street name in New Orleans, Tennessee Williams and Streetcar notwithstanding. Santa Fe bills itself as "The City Different," but New Orleans really is different. Santa Fe very consciously plays to its self-defined image for the tourists - or the image defined by the vast host of flatland foreigners who have made it completely unaffordable to actual natives. New Orleans and New Orleanians (is that what they call themselves?) just keep on doing their own thing; on the one hand appearing to be oblivious of the tourists, and on the other, cheerfully taking their money.

It's a great setting for hard-boiled detective stories. There is the city itself, with its very distinctive character and personality. There is the mix of cultures. There is the pervasive influence of the history of the city and the various groups, cultural and political, which have made it what it is. There is the geographical setting and its features, the low-lying land and the love/hate/fear relationship of the population with the water that provides the elements of the area's lifestyle and cuisine - and threatens to take back the entire region at a moment's notice.

Dave Robicheaux is a homicide detective and hangs out with a former cop turned PI. There are several things going on in this story, but the central story focuses on a long missing blues musician. You don't get much more New Orleans than that.

City of Veils by Zoe Ferraris

Finished on 6/2

I think this was from the "100 Kindle books under $4.00" list. I usually don't buy random unknown stuff unless it's pretty cheap. Buying random books, you win some and you lose some. This was a win - and I've gotten the first book in the series, which was not available for kindle a month ago - apparently the "under $4.00" strategy is effective. It waits on the shelf for the next occasion I want a book on paper. And now she has a third book out.

Ferraris is American, but was for a time married to a Saudi national and spent some of that time living in Saudi with her in-laws. I believe the book draws heavily on that time. The representation of life in Saudi is very deeply drawn - it certainly lines up with accounts that I have heard.

It is a murder mystery, but a murder mystery tied to the land and customs in which it is set. The motivations, actions, and reactions seem completely authentic in the setting, although they would be meaningless in a western setting.

Curiously, the two doing the investigating are a man and a woman. Katya actually works for the police in their forensics department. Nayir is a conservative Muslim and has continual issues with his association with Katya - although (or because) he is very attracted to her.

The story opens with the return of an American woman to her husband, also American, in Jeddah. She is unhappy in Saudi and unhappy in her marriage and on the evening she returns, her husband "goes out for a pack of cigarettes" and never returns. Then there is the body of a young woman in the morgue, assumed by the police to be the result of a "housemaid killing." It seems that female servants are of so little consequence that although the practice is officially deplored, men can kill them and dispose of them with impunity.

It seemed to take quite a while for the two story lines to merge, but when they did, the pace was almost breathtaking.

In addition to the cultural and religious aspects of life in Saudi Arabia, Ferraris makes a major point of the relationship between the people and the desert. And the story of the sand storm is right up there with any that I have ever read about hurricanes or tornadoes or any other such.

The Towers of the Sunset by L. E. Modesitt, Jr

Finished on 5/30.

Not bad, I quite enjoyed it - until I realized that he was going to run the same plot yet a third time in the same book. I had a hard time finishing the last quarter of the book - had to resort to "reading really fast," which amounts to barely reading at all.

I have heard of the Recluce books for years, but had never gotten around to reading one. I have to admit that he got me totally involved with these characters - which in its own way is another source of annoyance. For one thing, they were pretty good characters and deserved better of their creator than to be cranked through the same story line for the third time. And - I understand that, although there are about a dozen of the Recluce books, there gaps of centuries between them, so characters do not reappear.

There is one more little thing. The hero risked life and limb to escape from his homeland, which was a complete matriarchy - men were reduced to chattels - but when he got to a patriarchal society, he was able to muster no comprehension of the situation of the women. Seems to me that he should have been able to recognize that they were treated as he had been treated and so on.

My sister has bought a number of Modesitt's books in another series. I will try them.

Death Masks by Jim Butcher

Finished on 5/27.

Is this one why I quit reading the Dresden books? I'll know if I have already read the next one, I suppose. The good guys win, of course, but nothing - absolutely nothing - is conclusively ended. Both of the uberbads are conclusively defeated - but they both get away to return in a later book. And as for contradictions, Dresden is left holding one of the swords of the Knights of the Cross, promised by the dying holder that he will know the inheritor when he meets him - personally, I'm betting on Michael's two-year old son, Harry. Also, he has acquired one of the cursed coins of the Denarii, which turns its holder into the slave of one of the Fallen. And - Susan has departed forever, having hooked up with a group of people like her, who have been half turned by the vampires of the Red Court - or has she? She left Harry her phone number.

Up to the last chapter, it was all good gruesome Dresden stuff. Everybody, including (or especially) the White Council, is out to get him and all he wants to do is save the world - and the Shroud of Turin, which has been stolen by Chicago's leading Mafioso to (hopefully) heal a mysterious young woman hidden away downstate. By the way, that line doesn't finish either; Dresden makes a deal with Marcone to let him try - as long as he returns the Shroud unharmed. And we don't know how either part of that came out.

I love series fiction, really I do, but remember how annoying it always was when you got to the part in an episode of Law&Order where things ought to start wrapping up and you realized that they were going to do a Perils of Pauline thing and drag it out for another episode? I like each piece of a series to have a fair amount of structural integrity of its own. Even if something is announced as a trilogy or some such, each piece ought to be readable on its own (notably, The Two Towers fails that one miserably - file under Why I Didn't Finish The Lord of the Rings the First Time I Tried It).

Fatally Flaky by Diane Mott Davidson

Finished on 5/25.

I do enjoy these - and I am always thankful for my gift of forgetting which allows me to reread periodically. Otherwise I would be very sad, because there are only two left - and she seems to be going one every two years instead of one per year.

I actually pulled a quotation from this one to include in a pathetically pedantic piece for an ed class that I was taking. Goldy is rousting Arch for something or other and he is bemoaning the few days remaining of summer vacation. She informs him that it isn't like he is being hustled off to prison or something and Arch retorts,"You haven't been around an American high school lately, have you, Mom?" Ouch. And sadly, much truer than we like to think.

This one is all about catering weddings - bridezillas and all the rest. My absolute favorite scene is the one in which the drunken father of the bride/ex-husband of the mother of the bride shows up and the priest punches him out, landing him seat first in the elaborate wedding cake carefully constructed by Julian. What more could you want?

Perhaps, on another note, one should observe that the juxtaposition of slapstick comedy with high tragedy is a device that has been in use for centuries. I always think of Puccini's La Boheme (opera workshop my sophomore year). There is a rousing mock sword fight (with paint brushes) going on in the garret when the dying Mimi is dumped on their doorstep. Okay, enough culture.

Seriously, few do fluffy or cozy or whatever you want to call them murder mysteries better than Davidson. Lots of cooking, some knitting - was Miss Marple cozy? I think not, in spite of the knitting. I keep trying to define the sub-genre to my satisfaction, but I haven't got it yet.

Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke

Finished on 5/24

I thought I had read this many, many years ago. High school age years ago. Wrong. The book I have thought for many years was this one is something else altogether - now I have to find it.

Clarke really could put it out there. This vision of the future of humanity is chilling - and not at all like the vision of the book I thought this was, which was equally chilling in its own way.

First, there was the arrival of the Overlords, who coincidentally turn out (after many years of hiding their physical selves) to strongly resemble traditional representations of the devil. But the Overlords are not the end of the story - they are scarcely even the beginning.

I've always considered Clarke the master of the logical. He was, after all, an engineer. I thought he got "visionary" after his retreat to Sri Lanka. Wrong, again. This is his third published novel. By the way, I think the book I was thinking of is The City and the Stars. I'll have to check it out. On the other hand - of that logical thing - my favorite of his short works is a story called "The Nine Billion Names of God." Now there was a chiller - I guess he was always strongly mystical, in spite of the Rama books and any number of others.

It may be time to put him on my list of people to reread or to read for the first time in some cases.

Summer Knight by Jim Butcher

Finished on 5/23

For a change of pace, this time it is faeries not vampires. Someone has killed the knight of the summer court as opposed to (surprise!) the winter court (the one headed by Titania and the other by Mab, but I can't remember which is which at the moment) and a marker with Harry's name on it is called in to settle the matter.

He starts or at least is involved in (it has been a couple of months - and I have mentioned my ability to forget details) a war between the two courts which is resolved somewhere out on the waterfront in Chicago. All the Chicago stuff would probably have more charm if I actually knew the city, but I managed to avoid that in my five years in the neighborhood.

He also enlists the assistance of his pack of neighborhood werewolves - that bunch is definitely one of the delightful bits of this series.

An Infamous Army by Georgette Heyer

Finished on 5/22

I suppose even the best writers produce a dud every now and then - and goodness knows, Heyer produced enough to allow at least one. In my estimation, this is it. On the other hand, I think my sister really liked it.

Heyer abandons at least a couple of her basic principles here. For one, this is the third in a series. I could be mistaken, but I believe that all the rest are stand-alone. It is by generation, the character in this one is the grandchild of the couple of the first of the three books - not a continuing story of the same characters, although both previous couples appear - understandably - after all, they are the parents and grandparents ---

I'm thinking that it's ok for a writer to like his/her characters - but it is unwise to carry them on beyond their use-by date. Another "problem" with this one is that the "bad man" who is reformed in the end is not a man but the daughter/granddaughter of aforementioned characters from earlier novels. Not a Heyer strength.

All that aside, the real problem (for me) with this one is that it is an historical novel, not a period piece, but set in genuine history - centered around the Battle of Waterloo, no less. That may be what made this one of my sister's favorites, but it totally did not work for me. The shift between drawing room/ballroom dramatics and battlefield drama was extremely unsettling. And did the battle actually continue for weeks and weeks and weeks? or did it just seem like it. I guess if you are determined to "tell" an extremely complex piece of military whatever from the point of view of each of a couple dozen characters, it can become rather protracted. I was quite relieved when I checked the end of the book and found that the last thirty or so pages were a list of research sources - not more narrative.

Besides - wouldn't it have been just as satisfactory without blowing up the good guy?

Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English by Natasha Solomons

Finished on 5/20

This was our book club book for June. I have since missed the meeting where it was the book under discussion. There were legitimate reasons for missing - it was moved to Tuesday and that is a day when the car is unavailable to me at that hour, but I suppose I could have called around and gotten a ride, but I hate calling people for favors - like my mother in that, I guess. The real reason was probably that I didn't like the book all that much - and it was selected by a very good friend - and we usually agree on such matters.

It is all about a man who wants to be something that he is not - an Englishman. He and his wife are Jews who escaped from Nazi Germany and resettled in England.

Building a successful business is not enough for him, he wants to be more British than the Brits. His obsession eventually takes the form of ruining his business to build a golf course (a game he has never played) and carrying on an extensive and completely one-sided correspondence with Bobby Jones.

In a series of total improbabilities, he sort of succeeds and Bobby Jones graces his Coronation Day Tournament - and even more improbably he wins the acceptance and affection of a small village.

Possibly what made me the most uncomfortable with the whole business was the spectacle of a man making himself ridiculous to no positive end.

Women's Minyan by Naomi Ragen

Finished on 5/19

Something different for me - this is a play and I don't often read plays, but it looked interesting, it was very inexpensive, and there you have it. It reads very well and I'm sure it was most impressive on stage. It premiered in Israel in 2002 and in the US in 2005.

It is the story of one woman's situation - and is based on actual events in the ultra-orthodox community. Chana has left her husband - and her twelve children - and although the rabbinical courts have granted her the right to see her children, her husband and his family have prevented it.

When she comes to the house to see her children, she is confronted by her two oldest daughters and the women of the neighborhood, including her own mother and her mother-in-law.

She calls on the women to sit in judgment, agreeing to abide by their decision - if they find against her, she will not attempt to see her children again.

The title is a summary of the situation, because under the law, women cannot form part of a minyan, let alone form one entirely, because they have no standing as members of the community.

206 Bones by Kathy Reichs

Finished on 5/18

Reichs does not disappoint. Here the title is key to the story. As survivors of high school biology should remember, the human body has 206 bones. For once, Tempe finds all of those bones at a gravesite - and is properly amazed. But someone steals some of the bones - then others are substituted and the identity of the deceased is called into question.

Gradually it develops that someone is out to get Tempe by discrediting her professionally as not just this one, but several of her cases are called into question. Of course, it is obvious from page one that someone is out to get her because chapters are headed with italicized passages about Tempe's attempts to get out of the tomb in which she has been buried alive. The two narrative lines do eventually close with each other and the careful reader is satisfied but not surprised by the identity of the conspirators.

A Function of Murder by Ada Madison

Finished on 5/17

I have not found Madison's plots particularly memorable. The books are fun to read, but now (a month plus later) I had to go look up the book to see what it was about. Of course, one of the factors in play is that I seldom remember whodunnit - which means that I get to reread mysteries periodically. Another factor, however, is that the title presents no clue. I can look at the next book on this list - and the title reminds me of the crux of the mystery - and in this case, even who the murderer was - well, one of the murderers. In the present case, I remember the murder itself, after reading the synopsis on Amazon, but who and why - no clue.

That said, it was a decent read. The murder victim this time is the second string commencement speaker, the mayor of their little burg. Not only that he is stabbed to death with a letter opener with the university crest - one of which is presented to every graduate and visiting dignitary - leaving us with no shortage of suspects.