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.

Death in Bloodhound Red by Virginia Lanier

Finished on 7/26.

I read this - and the next three of these several years ago. Great stories. This one turned up the other day, and I decided they were worth rereading. Since the paperback is thick and the paper is yellowing, I went looking for kindle versions. The fifth in the series is reasonably priced in kindle format, but none of the others are. So, I read it on paper - which slows me down significantly. There are only six books in the series; the first was published in 1995 - Lanier was 65. She decided to write a novel herself after following Dorothy Parker's advice about a book she was reading: "This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly, it should be thrown with great force." She figured she could do better - and she did. Unfortunately, she died in 2003, giving Jo Beth Sidden a short run in the annals of detective fiction. On the other hand, maybe there is yet hope for me.

Like Goldy Schultz in Diane Mott Davidson's series, Jo Beth got away from an abusive husband alive and is trying to make a life and protect herself at the same time. Unlike Goldy, she is breeding and training bloodhounds for search and rescue, drugs, arson investigations, and anything else that they are used for. The thought of twenty or thirty bloodhounds in one place is somewhat overwhelming - a smallish bloodhound would outweigh my 85- pound shepherd. That is a lot of dog chow - and end product ---

There are a lot of searches in the story, but the primary thread is Jo Beth herself. Her own background is a mystery which takes a lot of solving.

Exodus (KJV)

Finished on 7/24.

No much to say - except that I thought that this book was mostly story, but there are an awful lot of repetitive "thou shalt's" and "thou shalt not's."

This is producing some reluctance to begin Leviticus - which I know is primarily law.

Worth Dying For by Lee Childs

Finished on 7/24.

Cleverer readers than I probably figure out the mysterious cargo earlier in the story. I was down to the last quarter before the light dawned. In my own defense, Childs is very cagy about the whole thing. It resembles somewhat the device that Reichs used in 2006 Bones, italicized passages at the beginning of each chapter describing Tempe's experiences and thought processes after being buried alive - somewhere toward the end of the story. Here the narrative of the movement of the cargo is in the same relative time as the action taking place in nowhere, Nebraska. I would like to see the book in actual print - typically there are many cues in the print - type face, spacing, pagination - that help with interpretation. Leading text was bolded in places, but the translation to kindle format drops most spacing cues. I wonder if writers/publishers will start using actual printed cues - lines of dashes or asterisks or something - to replace spacing cues as more and more material is being directed to electronic media.

I have read a number of books in this series, but not faithfully or consistently. I like the character, Jack Reacher, very much (Tom Cruise?? Isn't he about seven inches too short? I have trouble with the idea of a short Jack Reacher.) The series device of making Reacher portable dodges the issue of back story and consistency with continuing characters almost completely. Marion Bradley simply ignored consistency in her Darkover books. She is reported to have said that it was her universe, and she would do what she wanted there - or words to that general effect. Still most series writers do depend on that frame of character and setting - Kinsey Milhone and fake Santa Barbara, Sharon McCone and San Francisco, V. I. Warshawsky and Chicago, Harry Dresden and a very different Chicago, Dave Robichaux and New Orleans, Jim Chee and the res, and on and on. The setting can be limiting, I suppose, like a sit-com which has exhausted the potential of the situation, but it makes it very easy for the reader to slip into another story because we already (usually) are familiar with the general set- up.

In this story there were allusions to the previous story - probably to hook readers like me into purchasing that book to find out ... . And is the mysterious Susan in Virginia recent or ancient history - or nonexistent?

This one seemed vaguely reminescent of another Reacher book that I read years ago. I seem to recall that he walked into a small isolated community somewhere in the desert southwest and walked away leaving it in flames behind him, but that is only a very vague memory.

Based on very little evidence, it seems to me that the Reacher stories are either "mission" stories or "coin-toss" stories, as in "left or right at the crossroads" - toss a coin and thereby hangs the tale. And this one appears to be a coin-toss, but the end casts some doubt on that.

Children of the Atom by Wilmar H. Shiras

Finished on 7/22.

My sister and I were talking books the other day and remembered this one. I found it on Amazon and ordered it. Now she can borrow it when she comes back here to pick up her car from the shop (a long story which doesn't really impact this at all).

I first read this book in the late fifties or early sixties. I suspect that it was in my father's library. It is still a good read. The improbability of the premise really doesn't seem to matter - or at least it doesn't matter to me. We'll see what my sister says.

Of strictly tangential interest, I had always incorrectly assumed that Wilmar Shiras was male - probably more because in that period far more science fiction writers were. I wonder if there are others who disguised their female identities with carefully chosen pen names. I still run into people of my generation who will argue with me over the fact that Andre Norton was a woman.

Also, I had forgotten, if I ever knew, that this book was actually published as three novellas in Astounding - in the forties. They were expanded and published as a book in 1953. I think my sister knew that - I guess I don't pay a lot of attention to that sort of detail - fortunately, Google fills in the blanks for me.

"F" is for Fugitive by Sue Grafton

Finished on 7/21.

Eighteen years ago Bailey Fowler walked away from a prison work detail and never resurfaced. He was picked up by a fluke of mistaken identity and has been returned to Santa Teresa.

Kinsey's job is to find the person who actually committed the murder for which he went to prison in the first place.

Crunch Time by Diane Mott Davidson

Finished on 7/20.

This centers around the complicated life of Goldy's friend and fellow chef, Yolanda, who has appeared in several earlier books. Yolanda's ex-boyfriend is harrassing her, and she and her wheelchair-bound aunt Ferdinandina end up moving in to the Schultz home. One of the results is that Officer Boyd, who is frequently assigned to guard (and assist Goldy) and Yolanda fall for each other.

It is replete, as always, with near-misses and near-disasters of all sorts - including culinary.

"E" is for Evidence by Sue Grafton

Finished on 7/18.

Kinsey herself is framed in this one with carefully planted misleading evidence and missing evidence which all points to her - title hereby justified. She doesn't kill anyone either - so the allegation that Grafton always ends these with Kinsey blowing away the bad is beginning to look like a misrepresentation. Still, there are twenty-one more books in the series, some not even written.

She has done a good job of showing the frustration of fighting against a program of lies and innuendo.

The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold

Finished on 7/17.

This and the preceding two - "The Mountains of Mourning" and The Warrior's Apprentice were, I believe, originally published individually and later packaged as Young Miles - which wouldn't say much to someone who had never encountered Miles Vorkosigan, but I felt that for my purposes here, it was reasonable to treat them individually although they came as a package (this time) and each follows hard on the heels of the previous piece. This one, The Vor Game, did win a Hugo on its own.

So - to try to keep Miles out of trouble after he creates a private mercenary force, he is granted an Imperial waiver to the physical challenges for entrance to the academy and we pick up three years later as he and is hapless cousin Ivan Vorpatril are waiting for their initial orders. Ivan is assigned to the diplomatic staff in the capitol - Miles, not so much ---

Miles is sent as weather officer to a small post on an island close to the Barrayaran equivalent of the Arctic Circle. There he encounters a vicious and vindictive commander whom he manages to offend in their first meeting. Through the events on Kyril Island, we learn far more about Miles's character and his understanding of his responsibilities as a member of the Vor class.

He survives, barely, and is reassigned to the tender mercies of Simon Illyan, the secretive commander of Imperial Security, ImpSec.

On his first undercover (sort of) mission, he stumbles upon someone gone awol - none other than his old childhood playmate, Gregor - now emperor - and everything turns into a rescue mission. The complications are endless and war and civil dissolution are averted - but with endless confusion and excitement. The Dendarii Mercenaries are recovered from their usurper and achieve a place in the scheme of all things Barrayaran.

One must concede that a single identity is insufficient for a character like Miles.

"The Mountains of Mourning" by Lois McMaster Bujold

Finished on 7/16.

Bujold explains this as a novella by the strict literature student's definition on the basis of length.

It takes place chronologically between the end of The Warrior's Apprentice and The Vor Game, and serves to give the reader a clear picture of Barrayar and the challenges faced by Miles.

The colonists who landed on Barrayar became isolated from the mainstream of human expansion into the galaxy and developed quite independently as a society - a society which embodies many of the ills present in our own. They also had a nuclear war at one point and there is a culturally embedded horror of mutants. In the back country, any infant with any sort of visible birth defect is typically killed at birth, regardless of the fact that they currently possess medical science to repair many of them.

Miles's physical problems are the result of a chemical attack on his parents while his mother was pregnant, but that distinction doesn't mean much to most citizens of Barrayar.

In this story, Miles's father sends him out to the back country to deal with a problem arising from this bias - and Miles, himself, learns a lot about Barrayar.

The Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold

Finished on 7/16.

The first book of Miles Vorkosigan. I could have started and reread it again on the spot. I love this book.

In a bit of foolish heroics, Miles fails the physical and is not admitted to the Barrayaran military academy. In the militaristic (and pseudo-Russian) society of Barrayar that makes him something of an embarrassment. Although neither of his parents see it quite that way, his grandfather certainly does.

Miles is, therefore, shipped off to visit his grandmama on Beta - a world of science and rationality.

Quite by accident, of course, Miles ends up acquiring a ship or two and an entire mercenary fleet. This proves rather difficult to explain when he returns to his "real" life since his father is the former regent and now prime minister for Emperor Gregor - and there is a law which forbids anyone from having a personal military force which could potential attack the emperor. The penalty for conviction being starved to death while on display to the general public in a cage.

"D" is for Deadbeat by Sue Grafton

Finished on 7/14.

Deadbeat is definitely a keyword in this one. A man who appears to be barely a step up from living on the street asks Kinsey to deliver a check to a young boy. It turns out that the boy was the only member of his family to survive a drunk driving accident. The check is from the drunk driver.

This is not one of her more upbeat stories.

She does manage an affair in this one - with a married cop whose wife makes a habit of disappearing periodically. Wifey returns before the end of the story and they are re-re-re-reconciled, so Kinsey loses again.

"C" is for Corpse by Sue Grafton

Finished on 7/13.

A young man comes to Kinsey claiming that someone is trying to kill him - and before she can get well started on her investigation - that someone succeeds. This leaves her with the unsettling situation of working for a dead client.

Think "The Graduate."

As for my tracking points, a corpse is fairly critical (although not completely essential) to the plot - unless you want to count the corpse of the victim/client himself. And she didn't kill anybody (she did break his nose, though - but he nearly killed her first) - or sleep with anyone. She gets much less of that than Sharon McCone, although Sharon usually has a steady boyfriend for several books at a stretch and the latest seems pretty permanent.

Shattered by Dick Francis

Finished on 7/12

This is one of my favorites. Possibly because I find the hero's career fascinating - that is one of the things that Francis does very well - research fields and turn them into compelling settings for stories. Stories, of course, which are still focused around horse racing somehow. Then he fits the title to the story so precisely.

The guy in this one is an artist working in hot glass. And much is made of the annealing process which allows the glass to cool down slowly so the piece doesn't explode when the temperature differential between the inner mass and the outer surface becomes too great.

In a way his stuff is like Reichs' - the science or technology is so well incorporated into the story that it becomes almost part of the action.

The actual murder/motive is fairly complex. As I recall, his tend to be. I think it is time to start a systematic reread.

"B" is for Burglar by Sue Grafton

Finished on 7/12.

A basic neighborhood murder - although Kinsey got a couple of trips to Florida out of it. Nicely plotted.

And as for the contention that she "always" blows away the bad in the last scene - not this time. She didn't sleep with anyone either. She did break the guy's arm though, or did he break hers -- it has been a few weeks.

I am tracking her title involvement, too. Since the entire list of titles was conceived in advance of the writing of the first book, it should be a challenge to actually make stories that are appropriate to the titles - rather the reverse of the usual process. This one works.