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.