Fire Watch

 

By Connie Willis

A collection of short stories by Connie Willis

"Fire Watch" A young time traveler/historian travels back to Saint Paul's Cathedral during the time of the London blitz of World War II to join the Saint Paul's Watch, a group of volunteers who worked to protect the building from burning due to incendiary bombs.

"Service for the Burial of the Dead" A young woman mistakes her lover's ghost for her lover.

"Lost and Found" Based on a scripture, John 6:39, that declares, "I should lose nothing but should raise it up again at the last day." It the End of Days and the clue is that lost items are suddenly reappearing.

"All My Darling Daughters" Life at a boarding school where chastity is suddenly being enforced by the presence of strange new pets that are all the rage among the male students.

"The Father of the Bride" Sleeping Beauty's dad is finding life after the curse was lifted to be a bit of an adjustment.

"A Letter From the Clearys" A small group trying to survive after nuclear war. 

"And Come From Miles Around" Some of the scientific observers of an eclipse have come from very far indeed.

"The Sidon in the Mirror" On a mining site of a dead star, the miners are serviced by a group of prostitutes who have a hired new piano player to provide entertainment.

"Daisy, In the Sun" The Sun has gone nova.

"Mail-Order Clone" A man gets fooled by an ad in a magazine. He's a slow learner.

"Samaritan" An orangutan who works as a custodian at a church wants to be baptized. 

"Blued Moon" A new waste emissions system has unexpected consequences.

This was an OK collection of short stories.  The "Fire Watch" story was quite touching. "Lost and Found" was weird. "All My Darling Daughters" turned out to be rather gross and creepy. "A Letter From the Clearys" was depressing. As was "Daisy, in the Sun" which was also quite odd. "Mail-Order Clone" and "Blued Moon" were humorous.

Hearts of Sand

 

By Jane Haddam

A Gregor Demarkian novel

A murder occurs in a small resort town in Connecticut. The victim is a woman wanted in connection with several bank robberies thirty years previous. During the last robbery she was pulled, two bank employees were killed. 

At the time, a young woman named Chapin, from a wealthy local family, was soon identified as one of the robbers. But by the time the identification was made, she had vanished. The other bank robber, Marty, her partner, died in a car crash. Several other young people were in the car, but only Marty died. 

Along with Chapin's disappearance went the money accumulated from the robberies, $250,000. Over the years no sign of the money has ever appeared. 

Thirty years pass, and Chapin's body is found stabbed to death in her parents' home, a home that has stood empty for the thirty years since Chapin ran away. The family moved out of the house after she vanished but didn't sell it because they didn't need to. Chapin's younger sister made sure the house was maintained and kept in repair even though it was decades empty.

The local opinion and that of the police is that Chapin coming back and ending up dead must have something to do with the bank robberies. What they no one can figure out is where she had been living for thirty years. And what happened to the money.

The local police force is not really up to solving either the old bank robberies or the new murder of Chapin. So it is decided to bring in outside help in the form of Gregor Demarkian, a retired FBI agent and consultant. He is mainly there to solve her murder, but if he tracks down the money, that would be great too.

But as is the usual case in these murder mystery stories, someone else must die before the crime is solved. And in this case, it's someone who figured out who stuck a kitchen knife into Chapin Waring's back.

This was a fairly interesting story. The only thing I was disappointed by was when Demarkian returned home after solving the crimes, the author doesn't tell us if Demarkian's house was still in a unfinished state of repair, the same as when he left to go to Connecticut. I wanted to find out how it looked after his wife finished her home improvement projects.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

The Dead Fathers Club

 

By Matt Haig

Philip was eleven when his father died in an vehicle crash. His parents owned a small pub and lived in an flat over the pub. His father's brother, Alan, helps out at the pub but also works at a garage.

After the funeral, Alan starts to make some moves on the widow, who seems willing. Philip is not cool with this new development and allows his hostility to show. 

Then the ghost of Philip's dad appears to him and declares that his brother caused his accident. And he demands Philip kill Alan, otherwise, the dad will exist in eternal torment. 

As Alan becomes more involved in the pub and in his pursuit of Philip's mom, Carol, Philip tries to think of ways to kill his uncle and please his dead father. Meanwhile, due to Alan's increased presence in the pub, Philip becomes acquainted while Alan's partner's children, Dane and Leah, especially Leah. It's a friendship that is very much a boon for Philip, as the school bullies are fearful of Dane, Leah's older brother.

Leah and Philip become a lot closer and eventually become boyfriend and girlfriend. Meanwhile, Philip is still trying to satisfy the demands of his dead father. Although its hard to see how the ghost expects a scrawny eleven-year-old wimpy boy to kill a large, adult man. 

Eventually Philip starts to perceive holes in his ghost dad's claims. The ghost makes some mistakes which Philip spots. It becomes clear to the reader that the ghost is all in Philip's mind and can only know what Philip knows.

So this story is the author's retelling of Shakespeare's play, Hamlet. In Hamlet,  the ghost is seen by several people. In this story, only Philip sees the ghost. I take this as meaning the ghost is just in Philip's imagination. Philip is a boy with mental problems and no one to confide in, apparently, choosing to keep his troubles to himself. 

The story was OK. Unfortunately, the blurbs about it described it as "humorous" (Daily Mail UK) and "such sad fun" (The Guardian UK) and "dark comedy" (Eve Magazine UK). I did not find it funny which was disappointing.

Here is a review by Veronique de Turenne for NPR.

The Nine Lives of Catseye Gomez

 

By Simon Hawke

A Wizard of 4th Street novel

So in a world where magic is real and after a world wide apocalypse, anything is possible. Including strange animal magical cross-combinations like snake with dog aka snog. But also magical animals who have humanlike attributes such as speech and intelligence. One such animal is Catseye Gomez, a very smart alley cat with the ability to talk and a magic eye.

After the events of The Wizard of Santa Fe, Catseye Gomez leaves New Mexico and lands in Denver, Colorado. Before he even really gets settled into his new location, Gomez finds himself embroiled in politics when a proponent of equal rights for intelligent animals (ERA)gets assassinated by a bomb attached to her car. 

He joins a police detective investigating the murder. Blame is first assigned to a religious group who see magic and magical animals as abominations sent to lure the world into defiance of god's law. So not only a political group but also religious fanatics! The perfect scapegoats! But doubt does exist because, as Christians, they are also opposed to murder. The plot deepens!

I was not familiar with this series. This was my first time coming to it and I landed six books in. Probably not the best way to start. Thrown into the middle and new to Hawke's style of writing, I actually found myself hating the book. Not the plot, not the story, not the minor characters, but the pontificating of the main character, the cat. I skipped the many pages of its lectures as too boring to bother with. 

I also found the animal combinations disturbing and a form of abuse, very much like the breeding of characteristics in animals that are harmful to them that humans have been doing for a very long time. Ewww!

The Crow Trap

 

By Ann Cleeves

The first novel in the Vera Stanhope mystery series.

Three women will be spending several weeks living together in a small rural cottage next to Black Law Farm. They have been hired to do some environmental studies on land that is being proposed as the site of a new quarry. If their surveys show any endangered or sensitive plants or animals, the quarry project will not be allowed to continue. 

Naturally, there are proponents on both sides: business people looking to make money and locals hoping to find work at the quarry. And those who want the charm and beauty of the local countryside protected and those who are worried about the noise, dust and traffic they worry the quarry operation will create.

The first to arrive is Rachael, a woman who used to be involved with her boss Peter Kemp but he suddenly broke it off and got married to another woman. She is hoping her time with the study will give her some distance from her former lover and still current boss.

Unfortunately, soon after arriving at the cottage, she finds that a friend of hers, Bella, who lived at Black Law Farm, has committed suicide by hanging herself in a shed on the farm. Bella actually left a note addressed to Rachael, first of all saying she regretted Rachael would be the one to find her body. But beyond a few instructions, the only thing the note said about why was that Bella couldn't take it any more, without saying what it was she couldn't take.

The other two women arrive, Anne and Grace. Anne is a married woman who lives in a nearby town but apparently is not bothered by being several weeks away from her spouse. Grace is a smart but very aloof young woman who also has connections to the local area. What her roommates don't know is Grace has a reason beyond the survey work that brings her to the cottage.

While out doing her survey work, Grace doesn't come back to the cottage one evening. The area where the survey work is being done is not particularly dangerous but a search is begun to locate Grace but they don't find her until morning. She had been murdered, strangled.

But the police can't find any reason why Grace was killed. It didn't seem like the usual circumstances associated with the death of a person in an isolated location. She wasn't well known in the community even though she has tenuous connections to a local family, the Fulwells. Her early life was unsettled as she spent most of her childhood in foster care, going from foster family to foster family. Her mother died when she was a youngster and her alcoholic father abandoned her.

Nor did Grace's death benefit either the mining interests or the anti-mining interests. The main investigator, Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope, is stymied. She just can't nail down a reason for Grace to have been killed. 

And then Grace's father, who had moved back to his hometown, also is found murdered. Vera, the detective, begins to wonder if these murders have nothing to do with the quarry project and everything to do with Grace and Edmund's past lives.

This was an OK murder mystery. I didn't like that the author chose such sad, lonely outsiders as Grace and Edmund as the victims. That's so mean, to turn two people who have always been losers into the targets. 

Also the book was too damn long. It was over 500 pages long. That's way too long for a murder mystery. Took me over a week to read it. Annoying!

Kirkus Reviews has a review of the story.