The Cat Who Could Read Backwards by Lillian Jackson Braun

5Feb. Kindle.

What fun. I guess I was ready for some fluff. It has been years since I first read these and I had almost forgotten how much I had enjoyed them.

In the series opener, Qwilleran becomes acquainted with Kao K'uo Kung, who apparently does not object to having his name reduced to Koko as long as he has his gently braised filet for dinner. He falls into Qwill's keeping when his former companion (can't call him "owner") is murdered. Out of loyalty, I suppose, Koko goes on to solve the murders. Qwill's function is primarily to explain Koko's insights to the police, since they are disinclined to seriously consider evidence produced by a cat.

Vienna Prelude by Bodie Thoene

3Feb. Kindle.

The story is set in the years preceding World War II. The pivotal historic event, or series of events, is Hitler's subjugation of Austria. On the historical level, we see Europe step aside and allow it to happen. We also see the events leading up to the critical episode in Uris's Exodus, the boatload of children who are turned away from Palestine, is set up. I assume that it takes place in a later volume in the series.

Elisa Linder/Lindheim is a blonde, blue-eyed German Jew (by Nazi definition) who is a violinist in the Vienna Philharmonic. She can, and does, pass for Aryan. For the bulk of the story, she remains certain the what is happening in Germany cannot possibly happen in Austria, but eventually she takes her Aryan appearance and forged documents to run a stage on an underground railroad rescuing Jewish children.

On another level, Elisa cannot meet a man without having him fall hopelessly in love with her. There are three in particular: a German army officer, an Austrian peasant, and an American journalist. At essentially the same level, we have an almost ridiculously unrealistic happy ending - Elisa's mother and brothers are temporarily safe in Prague and her father escapes from Dachau (really?) just in time to collapse on the steps of Elisa's apartment in Vienna and be loaded up to escape Austria with Elisa and her husband (guess which one) just ahead of the Anschluss.

There were enough hanging threads that I am guessing that the characters and story continue through the series. If not, Thoene has a great deal to answer for in failing to explain how the Jewish concertmaster's Guarnarius turns up without provenance years later in the prologue to the story.

The Chaplain's War by Brad Torgersen

29Jan. Kindle.

Intriguing. Humanity is losing the war. The Mantes have them outgunned to an unimaginable degree and it is all over but the shouting (and of course, the final extermination of the human species). Then a Mantis scholar drops in to chat with Harry, the Chaplain's Assistant, at what amounts to a POW camp. He has to chat with the Chaplain's Assistant because the chaplain died of injuries received in the action that resulted in all of them being confined as they are. The Mantes are essential without anything resembling religion, and while extermination of competitor species is their basic mode of operation, they wish to investigate the concept in case it has some pertinence to their own society. Harry is without religion himself, and was only made a Chaplain's Assistant because the guy making the assignments didn't like him much.

All that said, Harry manages to arrange a temporary cease-fire, then to completely undermine Mantis society and end the war - and save the human race. And --- find something strongly resembling faith for himself.

The Various Haunts of Men by Susan Hill

25Jan. Kindle

An old friend found me on Facebook a few days ago and we chatted for a couple of hours about all sorts of things - including books. She was an English professor at the place where I now teach, and I took a number of very entertaining courses from her - we did Jane Austen one semester, all of Jane, and then there were the murder mysteries. And am not sure that we actually did a course - but I did do a paper for presentation on "the little old ladies." This is not a little old lady mystery and it is about as "uncozy" as they get.

The book is billed as a "Simon Serrailler Mystery," but Simon is hardly the central character, even his sister Cat spends more time on stage than Simon does. Simon is a DCI in a small town somewhere in England. I don't know British geography well enough to recognize the implications of various regions. The madman serial killer is right out there the whole time - and I did figure out who it had to be about halfway down. The story revolves around a young female detective sergeant who becomes not-quite-obsessed with several disappearances - then (I suppose this is a seriously major spoiler) the writer kills her. I was pissed. It seemed unnecessary to me, there was plenty of creepy perversity to serve any number of purposes without that. By then there was no more mystery left, they knew who they were after. It seems a terrible waste of a well developed and interesting character, a character that it is easy to like and care about.

Justice Calling by Annie Bellet

23Jan. Kindle.

I believe this falls within the range of Urban Fantasy. As I understand it, that means modern setting with fantasy critters. In this case we have a community of shape-shifters and a sorceress in hiding. Sorcerers being fundamentally considered bad guys (our heroine is an exception, of course). Regular old human beings are muggles, unaware of what/who is there all around.

It was kind of fun, not as porn oriented as the Derynda Jones book. A high level of sexual content seems to be a feature of urban fantasy, with possibly the exception of the Dresden books by Jim Butcher - and even there it surfaces in both personalities and specific varieties of entity.

Even Money by Dick and Felix Francis

22Jan. Kindle.

This is the one before Crossfire. It tends to support my theory that this book was more of a collaboration than the last of the "ands." How do people collaborate on a book, anyway? A text or technical book - I can see it: each contributing their technical knowledge/expertise to specific areas. Perhaps they even write different sections of the book while reviewing and editing each other's work. But in fiction it is difficult to imagine - although I know it is done. Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett have collaborated to create some of the best work from either of them - I read (probably a foreword or end notes) about how exciting it was for them to work together, but I still have no sense of the nuts and bolts - how the words actually got on the page. Oh well, subject at hand. This book is a more successful collaboration than the next one - which of course is the previous one here.

The bookmaker hero was less appealing than Francis's usual, but at least he had a connection to and interest in horses and racing. I suppose part of my lack of engagement was my unwillingness to think about the business of how odds are calculated and what they signify - the jargon was fairly meaningless to me. The part of the story that drops the mystery in his lap is dreadfully convoluted and not terribly persuasive. Also, the long drawn out business of his bi-polar wife doesn't really do much to advance the plot either.

I am thinking that I have been terribly cranky about virtually everything that I have read lately. I'm not sure where to go next. A good long nap, maybe - only the semester has just begun - no serious nap time for a few months. Maybe I will just pick out something that my sister has purchased and give it a run.

Crossfire by Dick and Felix Francis

21Jan.. Kindle.

This is out of order! And I made it this far without messing up! I was already well started when I realized my error, and simply decided not to go back.

I'm sad - because for only the second time in the Dick Francis reread, I am disappointed. The plot seemed rather formulaic, even a bit plodding. I never had that sense of tension and drama that I am accustomed to find in the scene in which the hero is tied up or knocked in the head and left for dead. The whole business was far too similar to that bit in an earlier book.

The hero, Tom Forsyth, had the potential to be one of the most compelling in all of Francis-dom, but fell far short of the mark. It opens with a scene in Afghanistan - where he, an army officer, gets his foot blown off by an IED. Then it's just sort of, so what? The only major impact of that is that he is not going back to his regiment as a combat officer. By the way, how many seventeen-year-old runaway enlistees end up at Sandhurst and come out officers? Really? Seventeen years later, he goes "home" because he has nowhere else to go - to the mother and stepfather that he ran away from - rescues the world and his mother, a racehorse trainer, retires and leaves him the business.

He has no strong ties to horses or racing, doesn't really care about either - he doesn't go to the races - he doesn't pitch in with the horses.

His army career doesn't connect with the story except that it gives the writer an opportunity to quote long passages on military strategy from Sun Tzu as Tom goes after the bad guys single-handed (and single-footed, although that doesn't pose a significant handicap to him). No ties to his actual experiences - except occasional discussions of how he never minded slaughtering the Taliban, but killing a white man gives him pause.

I think they overreached in their attempt to use the military as a framework - not because it couldn't be done - but because I don't think either of them understood it well enough to go there. This is the last of the "ands" (Dick Francis AND Felix Francis), and one might speculate that father was failing badly and son hadn't quite got the act together yet - but it makes me nervous about the Felix Francis books which follow this.

The Heart of the Family by Elizabeth Goudge

18Jan. Kindle.

My reading friends and I have complained from time to time about books that didn't have any characters that we liked. In these books there really isn't anyone that I don't like. I like some more than others, but no one is really unpleasant. In this volume of the Eliot saga, we have David Eliot hating himself and a new character, Sebastian Weber hating him as well. The main thread of the plot is decoding Weber's hatred for David. As a reader, I really want it resolved because I like them both and because at many levels, they have so much in common that they shouldn't hate each other.

Goudge's focus on the children continues with the introduction of David and Sally's Meg and Robin. I sometimes want to think that her children are the product of some sort of fantasy - but somehow she makes them seem real in spite of their insight, intuition, and apparent maturity.

I can believe in her children - but I'm not so sure about the compelling beauty of the countryside she describes. Most years we receive a calendar from a relative with pictures of the region of England in which he and his family live, I don't suppose it is the same region Goudge describes, but, to me, the scenes are at best banal. Maybe it is simply poor photography, but I'm afraid it really is just boring. I grant that those of us who live in the western US are terribly spoiled by the spectacular beauty that we have easy access to. I wonder if the scenes and setting of these stories exist - I would like to see them and make my own judgement. I suppose that for those who are susceptible to the appearance of "my own, my native land" nothing could possibly compare - regardless of where that spot is and what it looks like. Personally, I'm not sure about a place where a fire is appropriate in August.