Jazz Funeral by Julie Smith

23Jun. Kindle.

This is billed as a Skip Langdon story, and she is the primary dectective, with LA boyfriend having found another excuse to spend time in New Orleans. There is even considerable worry about their relationship. However, the story is really focused on Melody Brocato. Melody is the sixteen year old half sister of the murder victim. She disappears at about the same time as the murder. For the first few chapters we don't know if she was kidnapped or kidnapped and murdered or did the murder herself or saw something and ran away or ... . At about that point, it switches to her point of view and that is most of what we see for the rest of the book.

It was interesting seeing Skip from "outside," but I really missed being privy to her mental processes. Almost all that we see from Skip's point of view had to do with her insecurities about her relationship with Steve, the increasingly close relationship she has with her gay landlord, and her frustration at being placed again under the direction of the vicious Sgt. O'Rourke whose "management" style consists primarily of bullying and belittling his subordinates - reminds me of a guy I once worked for.

The primary setting is in and around the Jazz and Heritage Festival - or a fictionalized version thereof. Lots of music, lots of crowds, lots of food - sounds like New Orleans, all right.

Injustice for All by J. A. Jance

21Jun. Kindle.

J. P. Beaumont has worse luck with women than anybody around. He helps a beautiful woman drag the body of a murdered man out of the surf, ends up spending a night with her - the first since the death of his very short term wife in the first book. He feels that he is on the way to recovery, and - you guessed it - she is the next murder victim. Not only is she murdered, she is murdered in his red porsche. The next woman he mildly admires gets killed too. No wonder Beau is fiction's most depressed detective - after Matthew Scudder, Lawrence Block's creation.

To complicate matters, Beau is on vacation on one of the islands off the Washington coast. Of course, his many years with the Seattle PD have left him with connections in many smaller jurisdictions. And he needs them. This one is all tied up with political aspirations and lots and lots of money.

Then there is the fact that Beau has lots of money - thanks to short term wife, Anne Corley. He spends it well, often by paying for the services of lawyer/friend, Ralph Ames, whom he also "inherited" from Anne Corley. One of the major beneficiaries in this story is Beau's partner, who is fighting for custody of his children with his ex-wife who has taken them with her into a religious cult. I really like the idea of being able to afford to do something about situations - and doing it. Thanks, Ms. Jance, for bringing that fantasy to life, even if it is only on paper (or electrons).

The Man with a Load of Mischief by Martha Grimes

20Jun. Kindle.

This is actually the first in the series by Grimes. In this one we get to see the cop, Richard Jury, and the aristocrat, Melrose Plant, meet and develop an appreciation for each other. In book two, which I read just a couple of days ago, Plant just happened to be a guest of the master of the great house. I'm afraid that getting him on the scene for a whole series of these could be a bit of a strain, but probably no worse than many others.

This time we have a series of bizarre murders: murders of complete strangers to the village. (Do English villages really have such silly names? Long Piddleton? On the other hand, Grimes is an American, maybe she is just having a little fun at expense of the British.) Then the body of a local girl turns up.

It takes digging way back to discover the connections and uncover the mastermind behind it all.

This story takes place over Christmas. The next one - advantage of reading them out of sequence - is set following twelfth night, January 6. Running them pretty close.

There are some nice bits between Jury and a couple of kids from the village. Not enough to make me consider this "cozy," however. For some reason Jury loves to make tracks in fresh snow, and these kids present themselves and allow him to teach them tracking - by tracking up the snow in the village square. A really nice bit.

City of Beads by Tony Dunbar

19Jun. Kindle.

This is subtitled "A Hard-Boiled but Humorous New Orleans Mystery." Hmmm. Subtitles worry me for some reason. Do the authors feel that they must explain themselves lest their readers be unclear on their intentions? Do they want to ensure that the right readers find them? Is it the decision of the publishers? This particular subtitle reads like a cover blurb rather than a subtitle. And since when are there subtitles on mystery stories anyway. Beyond Murder blankety blah blah: a Fred J Muggs mystery, the inclusion of a subtitle seems a bit excessive. I guess I think lengthy explanatory subtitles should be reserved for those textbooks on abstruse topics that no one really wants to buy - Calculus: An Intuitive and Physical Approach. Right. Obviously, that writer intends to do it better than any of the thousands who have preceded him. At any rate, I found this book neither humorous nor hard-boiled - scarcely even soft-boiled, except for the fact that it took place in New Orleans in the summertime when pretty much everything is somewhat boiled.

The whole thing was a little diffuse, but Mr. Dunbar managed to connect most of the loose ends into the same evil plot before it was all done. There were a fair number of bodies left lying around, the mob, the Vietnamese mob, a group of earnest environmentally conscious college students, a wise-cracking secretary, a barely aware drunk whose sole claim to anything is a giant mudbug (crawdad, to the uninitiated) float which he drove in all parades, and so on. I don't think many of the cliches were missing. Still made pretty good reading.

One more note, I have no clue regarding the significance of the title. He found a string of beads in the gutter at one point and passed it on at another. There was a parade at which, in true New Orleans style, beads and other things were thrown. But neither seemed to have any real connection with the story. So - another "I don't get it." Nothing new there. I don't get a lot of stuff.

The Old Fox Deceiv'd by Martha Grimes

18Jun. Kindle.

I saw this on one of the Kindle deals and bought it. I hadn't read any Martha Grimes in years. I vaguely remember that they were a little depressing and at a point I just started reading other stuff instead. To my utter amazement, when I looked up her wiki for a book list they specifically categorized her as a writer of "cozies." Really! I haven't read many that I would think less cozy than hers. The detective, Richard Jury, is seriously depressed and the crimes are not exactly lightweight.

I suppose his sergeant and his hypochondria are a sort of comic relief, and I suppose some might read his civilian sidekick, Melrose Plant that way, but not really. Her gimmick is the pub names for titles. Are gimmicky titles a "cozy" criteria? This is not actually the first, but I had it - so I read it.

I enjoyed it, except for Jury's interactions with his supervisor, who is abusive and stupid - and frankly not very realistic - except that I once worked for someone very much like him. That's probably why those parts of the story bothered me.

One of the problems faced by the detectives from Scotland Yard is that apparently they are not called in on a case until the local constabulary has totally fouled everything up. They prove how good they are by solving only cold cases, I suppose. How very British. In either this book or the first one (which I have already read, but not commented on) Melrose Plant comments on the fact that given the way they prepare and serve toast, there must be a prevalent fiction that the British actually prefer cold toast - was Grimes alluding to the way that cases are handled by their hierarchical police system?

Here a young woman is murdered - stabbed to death by a mysterious two pronged weapon - while on her way in a striking costume to a Twelfth Night revel in the local manor house. Then it develops that her very identity is at question and a couple of generation's worth of secrets are dragged out into the light.

Melrose Plant is on the scene, a guest of the local baronet and insists that Jury be summoned. Any number of intriguing characters wander through, including a 12-year old boy who has been abandoned by his mother but is working and supporting himself and his dog - under the watchful eyes of several of the ladies of the village. In a side action, Jury sets that matter straight. A satisfying bit.

Murder with Puffins by Donna Andrews

17Jun. Kindle.

It was a double - two books in one package - the file was open. So much for my rule about back-to-back books by the same author. Actually, that may have been one of my mother's rules from when I was much, much younger. I was not allowed to check out two books by the same author on our weekly expeditions to the library. I think I was also required to check out a non-fiction book - I'm not sure I always read those.

The story was ok. The opening was annoying: following hard on the heels of the weddings of peacock fame, Meg and the not gay professor slip away to a remote island off the coast of Maine for a few days of privacy - and find all her dear family there ahead of them. So Michael, the professor, is bunked in with other single men and she sleeps on the couch.

Then the villain of the piece is murdered and the murderer makes a couple of good tries at Meg and Michael. After all, everyone wanted the villain dead and they were just too nosy.

It is a good thing that I have already read later books in the series, because otherwise this would have been the last one I'd have touched. The puffin connection with the story is tenuous at best, so Ms. Andrews tried to beef it up by making her chapter titles familiar quotations -- with the word "puffin" inserted for the key word. It wasn't enough to make me quit reading, but I did put it away in irritation several times. Incredibly annoying. In Peacocks, she used date references to the wedding calendars - that worked. This was amazingly stupid. I also know that she gets on to more inventive book titles. Where could she have gone? Murder with Penguins? Murder with Parakeets? How many "P" birds are there?

I suppose the writer of "cozy" mysteries has some latitude concerning general silliness. So here we go again. There is no question in my mind that this is a cozy mystery, but there was no knitting and no cats - maybe it was the birds.

Murder with Peacocks by Donna Andrews

16Jun. Kindle.

I had been keeping up pretty well there for a while. This one was all written up, ready to post, and I wandered away for a while - then we had a thunderstorm and I had to go sit with my hysterical puppy lest he destroy the house. Naturally, one of the boomers was close enough to kill the power for a fraction of a second. Naturally, THIS time I hadn't saved my stuff - after all, I was going to post it immediately ----

It will be a few days before I make that mistake again.

I'm pretty sure that this evening's thunderstorm has passed over, so back to the book.

I've read a couple farther along in this series, but not this one. I quite enjoyed it. Our heroine, Meg Langslow, takes a leave of absence from her anvil and studio (she is a blacksmith) to go home and manage the weddings for three bridezillas - her bff, her brother's fiancee, and her mother. Things look up when she discovers that the local dressmaker is miles away recuperating from surgery and her totally gorgeous university professor son is holding the fort with the assistance of a flock of Vietnamese seamstresses who speak no English. Unfortunately, village rumor has it that he is gay. Oh, well.

The brides keep making outrageous demands and changing all the arrangements. One of the changes calls for peacocks (see book title) to stroll around the grounds being decorative. The brides totally ignoring the probable generous contribution of peacock poop and frequent raucous shrieking (I live near peacocks, I speak from experience). The the obnoxious sister of one of the groom's deceased first wife turns up and is subsequently murdered. Some writers of mysteries do see to it that the murder victims are the most deserving. In this case it was a toss-up in my mind between the sister and one of --- well, never mind, read it yourself.

All kinds of general silliness and what all. And, of course, the final reveal that the gorgeous professor isn't really gay after all. Meg had to be bludgeoned with that one although he had been trying to tell her through the entire story. Good fun.

Death Turns a Trick by Julie Smith

15Jun. Kindle.

In this series, Smith makes San Francisco her setting. San Francisco is a city of definite personality as is New Orleans, but it doesn't become a defining feature of the story as New Orleans is in the Skip Langdon stories. Here the heroine is Rebecca Schwartz, a feminist Jewish lawyer. I'm pretty sure that is the order in which the adjectives are repeatedly repeated. (A little redundancy never hurt anyone.)

Rebecca even refers to herself as a "JAP" (Jewish American Princess) at one point. However, none of those adjectives seem particularly critical to either Rebecca as a character or the story. The fact that she is a feminist lawyer puts her in a position to be the attorney of record for a coop of prostitutes, but I suspect that other devices could have accomplished the placement as easily.

Oh well, we have political and police corruption and a successful bordello in SF; all kinds of fun.

One little thing has been surprising me. Everybody in Smith's books that I have just read (or reread) goes around high most of the time. Is pot smoking by professionals really so commonplace? Rebecca doesn't smoke much or often although most of the other characters seem to be high most of the time, and in her series, Skip Langdon seems to live on the stuff. I never noticed that when I read these years ago.

The Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie

14Jun. Kindle.

More early Agatha. Hercule Poiret again with the dim Captain Hastings at his side. We have a typically convoluted plot with interesting characters. The most entertaining line however is the antagonism between Poiret and the Paris detective - a competition between Poiret's reliance on his understanding of human nature and his little grey cells and the Paris detective's faith in "modern" forensic methods. Guess who wins. Poiret actually makes a 500 franc wager with the man (I have no idea what the equivalent would be in 2014 dollars). Poiret uses his winnings to buy a statue of a foxhound, which he used as a derogatory simile to the man and his methods all the way through. Poor Hastings, of course, while sentimentally favoring his friend in the affair, is a great believer in the other man's scientific approach. Will he never learn?

The Twelve-Fingered Boy by John Horner Jacobs

13Jun. Kindle.

This was referred to me by a former student who is showing a serious talent for finding really, really depressing YA fantasy. (We have this conversation frequently.) The last one of these series that he recommended was so depressing that I refused to read the second. This one however has potential for a satisfactory ending to the series. It ended on a total cliffhanger, which at least leaves that option open - even though our hero is back in prison and his buddy is in captivity somewhere - I suspect that book two will see him rescue his friend (or vice versa) and book three will deal with the evil villain.

Opening up a story inside a boys prison is a rough start. I have no way of knowing how realistic this fictional prison situation is - I probably don't really want to know. It was persuasively told without making monsters of either the inmates or the guards.

Axeman's Jazz by Julie Smith

13Jun. Kindle.

Less New Orleans, more psycho perversity. Skip gets to chase any number of red herrings before running this one to earth. Less New Orleans, but that which motivates a serial killer is bound up in hard-line southern perversity.

The boyfriend Skip acquired in the first book is back, I'm glad - he is a very likeable character and someday may actually manage to convince six-foot Skip that beautiful doesn't have to be dainty, delicate, and petite.

The plot revolves around the apparent resurrection of a serial killer of the period immediately following WWI. The Axeman was a jazz aficionado who went around killing people who were either ignoring or desecrating his notion of jazz by bashing them with a hatchet. The current killer is more into manual strangulation and has a terrifying method of selecting his victims.

A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire

11Jun. Kindle.

Not nearly as depressing as the first of the Toby (short for October) Daye books. Here there actually is some resolution to the fundamental situation. As in the first, Toby is sent on a mission by her liege lord. Just run down to Fremont in the heart of Silicon Valley and check up on his niece who has dropped off the grid. Yeah, right.

The juxtaposition of high tech with high magic is intriguing. It seems that the niece (who rejoices in the name January) runs a tech firm which specializes in magic compatible systems. Gotta love it. McGuire also introduces a fascinating character in January's adopted daughter(named April - pattern? - is there a minor character named May or June?). April is a dryad who survived the destruction of her tree long enough for January to install her in a server tree. I would like to see her continue as a character, but it didn't read as a strong possibility.

Faithful Place by Tana French

10Jun. Kindle.

The woman does have a way with words. I think I actually liked this one more than the two that I read back whenever it was. (I just checked - it was back in January of 2011.) I didn't actually reread what I wrote about them, but one I recall was ridiculously improbable, and the other just pretty weird. This one was very Irish, as were the others, but step-by-step the horrors never left the realm of something that could be possible.

As with the others, the central character is an Irish cop - a different one this time - his name seems vaguely familiar, so maybe he was a minor character in the others, or maybe not. As a teenager, Frank plans to run away from a hideous home with his girl, Rosie. He waits for hours at the appointed rendezvous, but she never shows up. At this point, perhaps things do become a little improbable, he gets on a bus and goes from his home suburb to the heart of Dublin and after a period of drugs and petty crime becomes a cop. And for twenty-two years never returns to his home neighborhood. Some fifteen or twenty years later, he encounters his youngest sister after an attempted mugging and they stay in touch.

Then one day she calls him to come home, a suitcase has been found in the abandoned house at the top of the street - and he learns why Rosie didn't meet him on that long ago winter morning.

Faithful Place is the name of the street - and it is indeed faithful to its character. Frank finds himself sucked back into the perversities of the place and its people - everything that drove him away in the first place.

New Orleans Mourning by Julie Smith

8Jun. Kindle.

What a great title!

I had forgotten how much I enjoyed these. They are so very bound up in the setting, this story could take place nowhere but New Orleans - and assuming that Smith's background or research is as good as it seems - we outsiders see something of New Orleans that is not known by many. "The City that Care Forgot" with its motto of "Laissez les bons temps roule" is just not such a carefree place as they would have the world believe.

At the levels of society which drive the city, roles are rigidly defined and those who fail to behave as required are severely punished. Skip Langdon is one of those. Her failure to increase her parents' status by moving gracefully through the social rituals drives her into exile. She eventually returns to The Big Easy in a role designed to torture her social-climbing mother - as a cop.

And such a New Orleans crime - the King of Carnival is shot dead - on his float during the Rex parade. Skip is a uniformed officer on foot patrol during Mardi Gras and actually witnesses the crime. That, with her upbringing inside New Orleans' elite, puts her on the investigating team.

Skip is a great character and the story is not as totally grim and perverse as the preceding paragraphs may have sounded. Still, the humor and light touches are all in the personal life of Skip - not in the murder and investigation.

Frey (The Frey Saga) by Melissa Wright

5Jun. Kindle.

Okay, I guess. A little diffuse, maybe. Things without explanation and a lot of range in the variety and variations of creatures called by familiar names, but not quite familiar in context and behavior. For example, the story is "elf-centric." The main character is an elf and the people that surround her are elves. Human beings are generally considered mythological beings. It is decidedly unclear on who are the good guys and who are the bad guys and why.

In some respects it reminds me of things like the Belgariad. It is clear that the hero is the hero and is something special and of great importance to the world at large - but no one will tell the little dork anything. Garion stumbles through the entire first book of five knowing nothing. Maybe it will work out better for Frey in the next book.

A Stab in the Dark by Lawrence Block

4Jun. Kindle.

These are some of the most depressing books I have ever read, but they are so well written that it is hard to leave them alone.

Nine years ago, a madman was wandering New York City stabbing women to death with an ice pick. Then suddenly the killings stop. Then through a fluke the killer is apprehended and cheerfully confesses to the killings, except the last one. That one he refuses to claim, and the records at Bellevue bear him out - he was locked in a secure psychiatric facility when the last victim died. Now her father wants to know why she died, since it wasn't just the inexplicable act of a madman.

Scudder takes it on, basically intending to do a little poking around and then tell the father that he was unable to discover anything that the police didn't cover at the time. But he does discover something. And in true Scudder style, although he provides closure for the woman's father, his digging has upset the fragile balance of her husband's new marriage and visited disaster on another group of people.

In his personal life, such as it is, one of the women that was connected with the victim seems to be a true kindred spirit for Scudder, who wanders from drink to drink through his every day. However, their relationship is short-lived when she decides that she has to kick the booze. Scudder isn't there yet, even though he has a couple of blackouts and is aware that he has made some mistakes that could have had devastating outcomes.

Black Scales White Fur by Kylie Chan

3Jun. Kindle.

This made three in a row dragon stories. Of course, these were Chinese dragons rather than western dragons. Still, it may be time to get back to murder or something.

Really a short story, not a novel - maybe a novella. According to Google a novella "usually lacks the subplots, the multiple points of view, and the generic adaptability that are common in the novel. It is most often concerned with personal and emotional development rather than with the larger social sphere." Okay, that works. They further state that it "generally retains something of the unity of impression that is a hallmark of the short story, but it also contains more highly developed characterization and more luxuriant description." Guess it really doesn't matter much, after all, Stephen King asserts that the novella is "an ill-defined and disreputable literary banana republic." On the other hand, Robert Silverberg calls it "one of the richest and most rewarding of literary forms." With such disparate opinion at such a level, I suppose I should just leave it alone. Isn't Google fun?

I am fairly certain that this character, one three seven (the demon king has so many wives that he doesn't bother to name them), has appeared in Chan's books featuring the Aussie girl Emma who has moved to Hong Kong and become involved with a pantheon of oriental gods. I would have to reread them to be certain.

This was released in close proximity to, if not in conjunction with, the release of the first book in the third trilogy of this series. Unlike any of the series novels, this story moves to happy ending (at least an implied happy ending) and still has a lot of sex - which seems to be Chan's tradmark.

Discount Armageddon (InCryptid 1) by Seanan McGuire

3Jun. Kindle.

This is certainly a departure from McGuire's other series. The Toby Daye books are about a vicious faerie rather after the order of the Dresden Files. In these, our heroine, Verity Price, is a member of a clan whose mission is to maintain a sort of balance between the "natural world" and the creatures of myth and legend known as cryptids - who are not all that mythological after all. The Prices were once a part of an organization known as the Covenant of St. George, which claimed as its mission the destruction of all these "unnatural (therefore evil) creatures." Now the Prices have made the preservation and protection of the monsters their mission and, as a consequence, have joined all the monsters on the Covenant's list of creatures slated for extermination. In the meantime, everyone on the Covenant's list with any sense migrated to the Americas.

At this point, the Price family with its branches is in hiding somewhere in the western US and Verity has taken up residence in New York City to oversee and protect the creatures there - and to pursue her own dream of being an international ballroom dancing star. At the time of the story, she is supporting herself by working as a cocktail waitress at a strip club run by a bogeyman, entering dance competitions, and practicing her hobby of "free running" which McGuire describes much better than I can. I even googled it and still don't have a very clear idea - beyond that of suicidal risk-taking. The wiki even defined it as a form of martial art. Then one night as she is free running home and checking up on some of her charges, she runs into a member of the Covenant - a young handsome member of the Covenant.

Naturally, they are attracted to each other - and consider killing each other - then girls start disappearing. And they discover that some weirdo civilians are planning to wake the dragon.

Definitely more fun that Toby Daye. I never did make any sense of the title, though.

The Dragon and the George by Gordon R.Dickson

1Jun. Kindle.

A classic of the genre which I never read. I'm sure my father had it on his shelves, but it came out in 1976 - and I was long gone from home by then. It is one of those catchy titles that I have loved and remembered somehow without actually reading the book.

I suppose it falls into the "Connecticut Yankee" sub-genre of fantasy - twentieth century guy through some accident or, in this case, bit of academic stupidity, falls into another time and place - generally a place where magic and what-have-you are fully functional. I don't know if Mark Twain made magic work in his book (another classic which I haven't read), but L. Sprague de Camp in The Incompleat Enchanter sent his guy to the world of Norse mythology, and Chris Stasheff made his fellow a wizard in his new world. This time, in case you hadn't guessed, we have dragons - and magic - and our hero is actually placed in the body of a dragon. Just for reference, in this world the dragons refer to a human as a "george." Nice touch.

Fun and games - a crucial battle between good and evil, fair maidens to be rescued, and a talking wolf - what's not to like? So, do we move Dickson up to the ranks of the Masters? More reading called for - and, just for the record - I just checked and this book is on my own shelves, along with the sequel.

I'm afraid there are many books on my shelves that I haven't read, and now, what with crappy vision and simple laziness, I probably will get kindle editions rather than actually go through the paper versions. Of course, there are more than a few books on my kindle that I haven't read. At least now if I went to Africa for a month, I could easily take along enough to read that I wouldn't be stuck having to read some of the rather odd things that my fellow teachers took along for their two books for the common pool of reading material. Have I mentioned lately that I love my Kindle?

The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg

31May. Paper/Kindle.

Wow! Maybe I've just been reading some duds lately, but this one rang the bell. Thank you, my friend and fellow reader, for loaning it to me. I started it next because I wanted to finish it and return it - borrowed books always make me nervous, what with cats and my habit of spilling things - but it has been a long time since I enjoyed anything so much. I had to buy the kindle version for two reasons - so I could read faster - and so that I own the book. I may present this to the other book club when it gets around to my turn again.

It starts out as the story of a middle-aged woman, the rather down-trodden daughter of a Southern (with a capital "S") Belle, but it is all placed on a story of the WASPs. It is one of the best WWII stories I have ever read, about one of the most overlooked passages in the entire war. The WASPs were finally recognized and granted status as veterans in 1977, thirty-three years after they were told "Thanks, but now go away and pretend this organization never existed." There are still many who have no idea what those women did - and others who still want to pretend it never happened.

The United States has a long history of ignoring inconvenient history. In women's issues, we do now read about the valiant suffragettes who fought for votes for women - but our histories seldom mention that the US was one of the last western nations to grant women the vote. And in this case, I have known about the WASPs for most of my life, but I didn't know that women were flying military aircraft in Europe for quite some time before the US military was driven to it in desperation. Many of those brave boys who got the glory and veteran's benefits were trained by women, thirty-eight of whom died in the service of an ingloriously ungrateful nation.

But the story is built in true Fannie Flagg style. Both time periods are peopled with wonderful characters and engaging events. The connections gradually develop throughout the parallel stories. Often I find switching between time periods or narrators somewhat jarring, but I was totally involved with both sets of characters and events; even when I wanted to know what happened next in the story in front of me, I was happy to find out what was going on in the other story line. Even when Flagg threw in one last twist, it worked.

Only Flagg could have taken the story of a southern woman in small town Alabama recovering from the weddings of her three daughters and the story of four sisters in a small Polish community in Wisconsin who take over the running of the family filling station when their father becomes ill and tied them together so delightfully.

All the Summer Girls by Meg Donohue

30May. Kindle.

The other book club met on Thursday. I enjoyed the conversation about the book, more conversation about the book than we sometimes manage in the book club that I have belonged to for years. This is the next book.

Since this is Friday, obviously it was a quick read. A couple of the reader reviews on Amazon said that it was a "good summer beach read" - I'm not entirely sure what that is. I have on rare occasions been to a beach, but never have done any reading there. I suppose it has something to do with those images I have seen of people sitting huddled under big umbrellas with big hats and sunglasses. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why deliberately go to a place with lots of sun and sand and water to sit in the shade and read a book? Trying to read in the summer sun always gave me a headache, anyway. Oh well, it must be some sort of cultural thing.

This was a good book to read sitting indoors with air-conditioning while school is out. I could even imagine reading it on the patio (in the shade) while waiting for the dog to tend to his business. It was pleasant, not terribly deep, and it had a happy ending. Or maybe it was three happy endings, one for each of the three summer girls. What more could you want?

The three friends since grade school thing is ok, I guess. I don't particularly identify with that either, having grown up a military brat following heavy bombers around the world, but it doesn't disturb me. The idea that three young women of not-quite-thirty have so much baggage does bother me. At 29, they should be still developing their lives, not re-inventing them.

Still, I enjoyed it. Taken as a whole, it was a "good summer beach read." Whatever that means.

The Adventures of Ellery Queen by Ellery Queen

29May. Kindle.

I don't know why I never read any Ellery Queen, but I hadn't. Ellery Queen is the pen name of a pair of writers. I'm not sure why they also made that the name of their detective. This is a collection of short stories that appeared on my kindle.

Queen solves mysteries by the application of logic and reason. In that he has much company in the genre - from Hercule Poirot to "The Mentalist" of current television. He is a rather irritating character, and the settings are quite dated. Like others, Queen has a solid connection with the police. His father is a senior officer of some sort and calls him in to consult.

Ellery Queen first appeared in 1928, and I haven't read much detective fiction from that period - I suppose I should. I'm afraid I was rather startled by the racial epithets on every page. A maid is never just a maid, she is always a "colored girl" and stupid as well as ignorant. Jews, Italians, and Germans also come in for the same treatment. Things have changed, I know, but that surprised me. It just seemed unnecessary - through the filter of many years of societal change. I have been reminded to consider the period and place and perhaps my shock is a little hypocritical given the way I reacted to the refusal of some members of the book club to read my last selection, but, the characters may have dropped the "f-bomb" with great frequency, but the writer did not reduce whole nationalities to ethnic jokes.

Ellery Queen and the "Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine" were definitely formative elements to the mystery genre, so I suppose more reading is in order, but I may find it rather difficult.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

27May. Paper.

Daughter two bought this for me. She does work for a bookseller and she thought this one would appeal to me. It did. And I spent another very late night finishing it before heading home - not because I thought I needed to finish it, but because I couldn't sleep.

A retired brewery sales rep (BTW - this is British, very British) gets a note from a former co- worker who was fired in disgrace many years earlier. She is dying of cancer and just wanted to say goodbye. So - he writes her a note and on the way to mail it, he decides to walk to the place where she was in hospice care because he feels that she will not die as long as he is walking.

To put things in perspective, Harold and his wife live at the southernmost tip of England and (did you guess?) Queenie is at the farthest point from their home that is not in Scotland - even in England that is a pretty fair walk. He sets out as he is, with no preparation or explanation wearing "yachting shoes" and a light jacket.

It could go pretty silly from that start, but somehow it doesn't. He changes, his wife changes, people he meets change him even as he changes them. He seems to feel a sense of responsibility to the people he meets and to those who join him on his walk for a time. He wants to make things right for them, for Queenie, for his wife, Maureen, but all he can do is continue to walk, so that's what he does.

Driving Force by Dick Francis

26May. Paper.

I was traveling, so I got out the paper copy of this one because I get irritated when flight attendants tell me to put my kindle away. Reading on paper is much slower for me than reading on my kindle. Of course, the fact that I was not at home makes a difference, too. Fortunately, Dick Francis is one that I can stay involved with even with many interruptions. It is also good at two am when I can't sleep because I'm in someone else's house.

I enjoy Francis's titles. He does refer to the title in its conventional sense in the book, but the hero of this one is the owner/manager of a specialized trucking firm - specializing (of course) in driving horses. And this time, another answer to the question of what happens to jockeys when they get too old and fragile (at around age 30) to continue to ride race horses.

I'm always amazed by what I remember and what I don't on these rereads. This time I remembered the general outline of the crime, including the murders, but didn't remember the motive at all. It was a bit convoluted, but still I would have thought that I would have remembered some of that. My convenient memory (or lack thereof) at work.

Fireblood by Jeff Wheeler

22May. Kindle.

I think this one was one of the Amazon good deals. Otherwise, I can't account for it's presence on my Kindle. It was ok, just went on (and on and on) to excessive length.

The combination of "traditional" magic and folklore and his own twists on the themes worked fairly well. He didn't bother to disguise them too much which was something of a relief - even if he did lock the groups and characters rather firmly into the stereotypes. His Romani are, as one might expect, gypsies and steal everything that isn't nailed down. The Druidecht wander about the woodlands saving the trees. And so on. Then there are the people who can "fly" by holding their breath - and the ones who can shoot fire from their fingertips (hence, fireblood).

It did strike me that some scenes were drawn from a careful viewing of the Rivendell sequences in the Lord of the Rings films. I suppose that may be inevitable in fantasy - especially when one has read a great deal of it.

What wore me out was the continual switching of characters from good guys to bad guys and back again. Reforming a character, or the gradual revelation that another character's motive is not as pure (or as perverse) as one has been led to believe is a fundamental part of story-telling, but a couple of these switched back and forth too many times to count. I think it made the story seem longer than it was (and I do believe that he intends it to be part one of a multi-volume ...) - there were times when I just wanted it to end so I wouldn't have to suffer through another switch.

A pretty traditional "save the world" plot. The great evil is so great that no one is actually sure what it is - and, of course, the book ends as the fellowship is gathering to go forth to do battle with the great evil - setting up book 2. Sound familiar? Again, that is all right as long as he actually gets the job done in another volume or two.

So, a qualified good grade - maybe C+ or B-. I had hoped that perhaps this was his first book and he would improve - but he has been at this for a while and this is not his first effort.

Night of the Clipper by Vincent Walcek

20May. Kindle.

This book was written by a friend of a friend of mine. I really like my friend and value her judgment in matters of literature. I think my friend must really like her friend. Her friend is in all probability a really great person. I don't know about that, but as I said, I trust my friend's judgment. Still, I do not like her friend's book.

The writing is stilted and pedantic. The characters are scarcely even two-dimensional, with not the remotest claim to three. Giving full bios on every character, however minor, does not make them well-rounded, it simply leaves the writer with nothing to reveal as the story progresses. Good writers that I know do develop quite detailed back stories on even minor characters. However, they do not clutter up the pages of their stories with them; they create them so that they will understand how these characters will behave and talk. Sometimes it seems to me that well written characters have a sort of autonomy. I have heard their creators say things like "I wanted him to ...., but he wouldn't do it." These characters seemed to be like ridiculously well-mannered puppets on strings.

I suspect that the writer finds dialogue awkward to punctuate - you know, all those quotation marks and indents and stuff - so his pasteboard characters tend to pontificate at each other rather than converse.

His teenagers sound and act like five and six-year-olds, so I suppose it isn't surprising that his seventy-year-olds sound and behave like teenagers.

In all of the "over-telling", there are odd omissions. At one point, he carries on for some time about the mother of the family having given up her legal career to be home for her children and specifically having made a commitment to provide them with a delicious breakfast to start each day right. He proceeds to discuss a particular hot breakfast and to have said children appreciate it and thank their mother for it (and these are supposed to be real kids?) - but never tells us what it is - eggs benedict? German pancakes? Crepes? This may be the only instance in which he failed to deliver far more information than was necessary.

It also seemed odd to me that although there are frequent references to the date, since this is all based on the fiftieth anniversary of an actual plane crash, he seems to have neglected the fact that the entire action took place in the middle of winter. Kids outside playing, running around on bicycles, picnics? They do have winter in Maryland, don't they?

We all know by now that I am a grammar nazi and a word nerd. Let me merely state that both of those facets of my evil side were deeply offended and appalled by grammatical errors (the comma comes BEFORE the conjunction) and word choice. "Moniker?????" I have only seen/heard that word used in parodies of hard-boiled detective fiction of the thirties. And what was that business of continually referring to the Pan Am logo or icon as "livery?" According to Google, it is technically correct when referring to the entire paint scheme, still I had never encountered that usage before - and I worked in Boeing's Commercial Airplane Division back in the day, although that particular airplane came off the line before my time.

I think perhaps the writer suffered from a version of the writer's disease that afflicted my father. My father longed to write fiction, but he always had such a clear vision of the story that he was trying to tell that he spent far too many words trying to ensure that his readers would see exactly what he saw. The stronger approach is to tell them what they need and let them build their own images.

Part of this rant is frustration. I'm not much on ghost stories, and as ghost stories go, this one had very little justification, but there was the potential for a really good story there which went almost completely unrealized.

Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire

19May. Kindle.

I believe this genre is called Urban Fantasy. This reminded me strongly of Butcher's Dresden books. Our heroine, October Daye, is a changeling - at least in the lexicon of this book. There is a long list of definitions of categories of the fae at the beginning. According to this version, a changeling is a half-breed, the product of the mating of a human with a creature of faerie. According to Google, a changeling is a fae infant swapped for a human child - or the human child which is stolen. Oh well, I suppose anyone is entitled to create their own version.

The setting is San Francisco, with any number of openings into faerie land. A rather unpleasant faerie land, but then the faerie lands of Urban Fantasy tend to be rather unpleasant places. Toby takes even more of a beating than Dresden does in the course of one of his adventures.

I'll give her another try, this was definitely not as well-crafted as Dresden, but has potential.

The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie

17May. Kindle.

Agatha #2 in publication order. This is the first of the Tommy and Tuppence stories. I've never felt that those were her best. This is not a murder mystery particularly, more of a spy/political conspiracy thing.

Our two bright young things are at loose ends after the end of WWI and decide to set up as the Young Adventurers in lieu of jobs. Predictably they get into all sorts of trouble - involving a conspiracy to take over the world (well, more or less).

Its fundamental improbability and general silliness do not show Christie's skills at their best. I gather that Miss Marple doesn't put in an appearance for a number of years. She was always my favorite - it must be the knitting.

The Pusher by Ed McBain

16May. Kindle.

The rough, grungy 87th precinct seemed pretty straightforward and rational after that last one.

Of course, he did shoot everyone's favorite character, newly married Steve Carella, early on. His intent was to remain faithful to his original vision of a series where the "hero" was not a person, but the police department of the precinct as a unit. Fortunately for all of us, his editor and publisher refused to allow him to go through with it - and Carella lives.

I have been inescapably reminded of my favorite television police series of all time - Hill Street Blues. The "ensemble cast," the anonymous setting, --- the ending of the first episode where two of the central characters were shot down in the last scene, and miraculously revived in the next episode. So - out to Google - to find (surprise!) that the 87th precinct was one of the sources that inspired the TV series. I remember long discussions about what city was the model for the city in Hill Street - popular theory was that it was Chicago, Google concurs, but like the 87th precinct, Hill Street is deliberately set anonymously. McBain explains his decision - he wanted to have the freedom to ignore the geography of a real setting. It works.

The theme of this one is obvious from the title and he carries it through from the death of a small- time Puerto Rican junkie and pusher to the involvement of the son of one of the senior officers of the precinct.

I have read (and watched) police procedurals in which the various crimes in a book or episode are random and unrelated. This is probably far more realistic, but I really like the way he draws the theme into everything.

Beauty and the Beast by Ed McBain

16May. Kindle.

This one was seriously perverse. I've read several of the Matthew Hope novels by now and know enough not to expect fluffy in spite of the fairy tale titles, but this one went well beyond the point at which the others stopped. The initial crime was incredibly brutal - a woman, hands and feet tied with wire, is doused with gasoline and burned to death on the beach. Grim start. And in many respects in only got worse - not in the sense of physical brutality, but the devolution of good intentions into such a result. After all, the murder is the end of the story rather than the beginning, even if it traditionally opens the book. A mystery novel is about someone trying to figure out the story - after the fact.

In spite of the nature of this story, McBain is such a craftsman that the book is compelling to read. I have started books that I simply could not finish - or if I finished them, I never picked up another by that author. That won't happen here.

Spider Woman's Daughter By Anne Hillerman

15May. Kindle.

Oh dear. Is it fair to be disappointed in a book because it was not written by a different person? Probably not. I had hoped for another Hillerman, and it wasn't one. I might have thought it was all right if I hadn't been expecting something else. Maybe if I hadn't reread A Thief of Time. Maybe.

She committed a few crimes against series fiction that I find very difficult to excuse. She blatantly took her father's characters and wrote a sequel to one of his novels; given that, she had no business changing the original plot (and other events in the back story) to suit her convenience, did she think that no one would notice? And even less right to change the very nature of the characters which she stole. How dare she make Chee and Bernadette stupid? That was inexcusable.

Leaphorn, too. If she wanted to attach her father's fans, she probably should not have started by having someone walk up and shoot Leaphorn in the face at point-blank range - in front of a dozen or so of the area's top cops.

If she intends to continue writing murder mysteries, she needs to try it on her own instead of battening on Daddy's rep. Maybe actually reading Dad's books would help - then she could at least see how it is done - at least she could make her thefts consistent with their source.

A Thief of Time by Tony Hillerman

14May. Kindle.

I'm not sure I can count the times I have read this book. We taught it in Junior English - so for however long that was, I read it every year - or every semester while we were on block schedule. Still, I haven't read it since that phase and that's been probably well over ten years. My sister got a book by Hillerman's daughter which is supposed to be a sequel to this book - and got this one as well because she hadn't read it in quite some time. I figured that a refresher couldn't hurt.

It was well worth the reread. I am definitely going back and reading these consecutively - specifically to watch the characters develop. I can't remember if this is the first one with both Leaphorn and Chee, I think not, but this one seriously develops the relationship between the two of them. We watch both of them struggle through personal crises - Leaphorn mourning the death of his wife, Emma, and Chee realizing that his relationship with Mary Landon, the bilagaana schoolteacher he loves, is doomed. Okay, so Janet Pete is already around, but they aren't (quite) an item yet, even if he does wreck her car for her.

In fact, it is possible that he resurrected the Mary Landon relationship for the purpose of a "literary" parallel - I had thought that the episode of the pregnant cat closed that chapter in Chee's life. And at the moment, I don't remember which book that was. I don't recall ever dealing with this particular parallel between the two when I was using the book for teaching, but it might be beyond the unsubtle mind of the sixteen-year-old reading under compulsion. What's sad is that I was so focused on that level and "what worked last year" that I never really appreciated it myself. I am afraid that that is probably a common thing among teachers, particularly high school teachers who teach the same book(s) year after year - because, after all, they are already on the shelves and it is not easy to persuade those who control the purse strings to loosen them when there are perfectly good "words in a row" sitting there. College instructors have a little more flexibility since students purchase their books.

The working relationship between the two is interesting. At the beginning, when they realize that their individual investigations overlap, they are decidedly leary of each other. Leaphorn considers Chee young, odd, and unpredictable; Chee is uncomfortable with the "legendary" lieutenant and expects him to take over. The pattern of their work is intriguing: each works his own line then they move ahead when they find those lines twisted together. They arrive at the final conclusion each from his own direction and it takes both of them to resolve it satisfactorily. The final acknowledgement of their appreciation of each other is Leaphorn's request that Chee perform Blessing Way for him.

I could go on and on about the significance of that action. Leaphorn accepts the traditional to the extent of seeking this method of cleansing himself of the death that has surrounded him - not just that of the series of murders, but also Emma's. He is moving on with life - and has awknowledged Chee's way as having value. From Chee's perspective, this is the first time that he has actual been contracted to perform a sing. And the fact that it is Leaphorn who has requested it validates his own decisions both as a cop and a singer.

On the other hand, when teaching Hillerman, I worried about reading too much into what was essentially pop fiction. I may be doing that now.