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.

Cool, Calm, and Contentious

 

By Merrill Markoe

A collection of twenty-one semi-autobiographical and mildly humorous short stories ranging through a wide variety of the author's life experiences.

Stories about dealing with a mother who was demanding and hyper-critical of her daughter, Merrill. Ones about the dogs Merrill has had in her life. Stories about her school days, stretching into her years in college. Stories about the men in her life, including the most famous one, David Letterman, who is very thinly disguised as Bobby. Stories about her early sexual experiences, including rape. A rafting trip, attending a Fetish Ball, drinking sixteen ounces of vodka like it was a refreshing glass of water. Advice on life, for instance, drawing on years of experience with her mother, how to spot and avoid narcissists and assholes. 

For the most part, I enjoyed all the stories. Some were real slices of life and some were actually quite funny. Really, the only one I kept nodding off to was "Celebrity Criminals and Criminal Celebrities: Celebrity 2.0." Probably because I am not much interested in celebrities.

I characterized the stories as semi-autobiographical because she includes stories where she and her dogs have involved conversations. I'm guessing that is just fantasy or she is bonkers. I personally think if dogs could talk, they would only talk about walks, food, critters, food, intruders, food, naps, food, going outside, food, coming back in, food and bedtime.

For another review, see Publishers Weekly.

"My Teenage Son's Goal in Life Is to Make Me Feel 3,500 Year Old"

 

By Dave Barry

A small collection of short, humorous observations from Barry on parenting based on personal experience. A fun, light, read for those times when you are in the mood for something amusing and easy.

A few excerpts:

"My son is going to parties where the boys dance with actual girls. This was unheard of when I was eleven, during the Eisenhower administration. Oh, sure, our parents sent us to ballroom-dancing class, but it would have been equally cost-effective for them to simply set fire to their money."

"The computer is a great teaching tool for young people. For example, my home computer has an educational program that enables you to control an entire simulated planet—its ecology, its technology, its weather, etc. My ten-year-old son and his friends use this program a lot, and we've all learned some important ecological lessons, the main one being never, ever put ten-year-old boys in charge of a planet ("Let's see what happens when you have volcanoes and nuclear war!")

"Parents: School is almost out, which means it's time to make those summer vacation plans, load up the family car, and take off, quickly, before the kids get home.

I am of course joshing. You should take the kids; there's nothing quite like putting the whole family into the car and hitting the open road, leaving your worries behind, driving mile after carefree mile, sometimes as many as three carefree miles before everybody hates everybody else and gunfire breaks out in the back seat."

Personal Demons

 

By Stacia Kane

Dr Megan Chase is a psychologist who has just started a new job as a radio personality of a call-in show who promises to slay her listeners personal demons. 

What she doesn't know is that her promise has upset the personal demons and she is on their hit list. Now she is seeing these little demons everywhere she goes and it is clear they are serious about making her pay for her promise to slay them. The thing is, these demons don't seem to be the smartest monsters, unable to understand that her threat is not an actual promise to kill anything.

But little personal demons is not the only demon suddenly appearing in her life. For she comes home one evening to find a handsome stranger waiting on her doorstep, anxious to speak to her. Grayson Dante has something he needs to tell her. That her life is in danger from the personal demons and that he, also a demon, is there to protect her.

Naturally she has her doubts. But he soon makes it clear that he is what he says he is. And events soon transpire that convince Megan that everything he has been saying is the truth and that the personal demons are coming for her.

This was an OK read. Although the idea that a demon is good-hearted didn't sit well with me. This modern tendency to remake the old monsters into the opposite of what they traditionally are is not one I agree with. Anyways, like I said, it was an OK read. 

The Last Thing He Said

 

By Laura Dave

Hannah had only been married to Owen for a year when he vanished, leaving behind a cryptic note that only said, "Protect her." Namely his teenage daughter, Bailey.

Bailey and her dad had been just the two of them for years. So it's not surprising that Bailey regarded Hannah as an unnecessary intruder in their life. But despite Bailey's gentle displeasure, Hannah keeps trying to build rapport with her husband's daughter.

But now he has disappeared. And Bailey has come home with a bag of money her father left in her school locker along with a note asking Bailey to help Hannah and do what she asks her to do. Not only that, but there is some kind of trouble at Owen's place of work. His boss was claiming advancement in new software that did not actually exist. A fraud that that will cost investors millions in losses and now the police are at Hannah's door, wanting to know where Owen is and suspecting her of being in the thick of it.

Hannah can't help but wonder if Owen is part of the funny business at his job. And she thinks she might be able to figure out where he has gone into hiding if she gets in touch with his family and friends. But as she and Bailey dig deeper into Owen's  past, she eventually figures out that Owen Michaels is not a real person. But why did he change his name and walk away from his past with only his daughter to tie him to it? Since Bailey only knows her dad as Owen Michaels, she can't shed any light on it. Except maybe somewhere is her childhood memories is the key to uncovering whatever happened in the past that led Owen Michaels to run away from his former life.

I really enjoyed this mystery story. Of course, as the reader, you have to expect that Owen is a bad dude and that he is involved in something really bad. At first it seemed like it has to do with his boss's shady business practices but as Hannah digs deeper it begins to look like Owen was hiding from something terrible in his past. The question is, was it something Owen did? Or was it something he witnessed? And will Hannah ever be reunited with her vanished husband?

Check out the review of the book by Kirkus.

The Collapsing Empire

 

By John Scalzi

First novel of the Interdependency trilogy. 

In the distant future, and cut off from our home planet of Earth, humans have scattered throughout space, mostly living in manmade habitats, but a few on actual planets. Why in habitats instead of on worlds? Because of the Flow. Because faster-than-light travel does not exist:

"The speed of light is not only a good idea, it's the law. You can't get to it; the closer you accelerate toward it, the more energy you need to keep going forward, and it's a horrible idea to go that fast anyway, since space is only mostly empty, and anything you collide with at an appreciable percentage of the speed of light is going to turn you fragile spaceship into explody chunks of metal. And it would still takes years, or decades, or centuries, for the wreckage of your spaceship to zoom past wherever it was you originally planned to go."

So instead there is the Flow, which is:

"...generally described to laypeople as the river of alternate space-time that makes faster-than-light travel across the Holy Empire of the Interdependent States and Mercantile Guilds . . . The Flow, accessible by 'shoals' created when the gravity of stars and planets interacts just right with the Flow, to allow ships to slip in and ride the current to another star.

[However] The Flow is not anything close to a river—it is a multi- dimensional brane-like metacosmological structure that intersects with local time-space in a topographically complex manner, influenced partially and chaotically but not primarily by gravity, in which the ships accessing it don't move in any traditional sense but merely take advantage of its vectoral nature, relative to local space-time, which, unbounded by our universe's laws regarding speed, velocity, and energy, give the appearance of faster-than-light travel to local observers.

 And even that  is a crap way of describing it..."

So that's the author's way of having reasonable travel times so he can tell a story about an empire of city states run by the great houses based on trade which makes for interdependency without which they cannot survive on their own. 

So it's a system that has worked for a very long time. But all good things must come to an end, I guess. And that time has come for the Interdependency. 

Some smart people have figured it out. As have some not quite so smart people. Unfortunately, the not quite so smart ones based their conclusions on faulty math. They think they have figured out where the new center of government is going to be and they are doing everything they can to make sure they are the one running things. 

Meanwhile, the actual governmental hub, a bit slower to get it than the other group, figure out that the other group is working under wrong conclusions. But the governmental group, being in a phase of transition and being a bit slow to act, is being attacked by the other guys, who are using chaos and terrorism to gain the upper hand.

So that's the story. It pretty much ends with the government people telling the ambitious people that they are operating under mistaken conclusions. And that humankind still has to cooperate in order to survive the coming catastrophe of changing of the Flow.

This was a pretty good story, not as boring as a lot of these, what I would call political novels, as many of them are (to me). I found I wasn't skipping a lot of pages, I only did that a couple of times. Which says a lot as I have a habit of just glancing through text that is too descriptive, too gross, too talky or has depictions of battles. Battles, I only care about the outcome, not the action. So a pretty good story. Not good enough for me to follow up with the rest of the trilogy though. The second book is The Consuming Fire followed by The Last Emperox.

Here a review by Kirkus Reviews.

 

Charmed : Shadow of the Sphinx

 

By Carla Jablonski

Based on the TV series Charmed created by Constance M. Burge.

New to the Halliwell family of witches, young Paige finds herself alone while her two sisters are busy elsewhere. She heads upstairs to spend her alone time with the Book of Shadows, a collection of information and spells created by the witch ancestors of the current three Halliwell sisters.

Paige is browsing through the book when she finds a spell for shapeshifting. She decides to try out the spell because the power to shapeshift is one her two sisters don't have and that is appealing to Paige. As she rushes to gather all the items needed for casting the spell, she fails to read to spell instructions all the way through. 

The spell works and Paige finds herself turned into a kitty cat. But when her sisters return home, Paige realizes she doesn't know how to stop being a cat. And her sisters are surprised to find a strange cat in their house and she is captured and hauled off to an animal shelter.

At the shelter, Paige is quickly adopted by a man and taken away by him to a meeting of a small cult calling themselves the Disciples of Thoth. Paige becomes the focus of a ceremony being performed by the cult members, lead by the man who adopted her from the animal shelter, Tyler Carlson. 

The center of attention, Tyler and Paige abide while the acolytes chant and the two vanish from modern times and find themselves back in ancient Egypt, in a temple dedicated to the cat god Bastet. And find themselves surrounded by hostile guards and hysterical priests, accused of being foreign spies. Locked away in prison cell with no way out, even Paige's witch powers don't work because the walls of the prison are covered with anti-magic spells that nullify her powers.

Meanwhile, back in current times, the sisters have figured out what Paige did and are on her trail. They soon understand that Paige and Tyler are in ancient Egypt and they use their magic powers to travel into the past after her. Ending up in the same temple in which Paige and Tyler had appeared, they see a cat in the temple and assume it is Paige and grab it and take it back to their present time. They perform a spell to return Paige to her human form and the spell works but the woman who appears is not Paige. She is Hoptith and she was condemned to be confined a cat form because she was an evil and dangerous witch. And now she is thrilled to be herself again and she has all sorts of plans that don't bode well for either the past or the present.

This was an OK read, if a bit juvenile. I was not familiar with the TV series when I got the book  but it sounded like a fun read. It was a bit chaotic and the action often happens with little explanation and lots of improbable coincidences. Like what are the odds that when the two sisters change the temple cat into a person, it turns out to be a powerful and dangerous witch bent on world domination? Or that when Paige, in her cat form, is dropped off at the animal shelter, she is immediately adopted by a man who wants to use the cat in a magical ritual that very night? Too juvenile in tone for me.

Stardoc

 

By S. L, Viehl

First book in the Stardoc series.

Cherijo Grey Veil worked hard at her studies and became a very skilled surgeon. Then she found out something about her father, Dr. Joseph Grey Veil, that turned her world upside down. And she fled her home and found a job at a medical clinic on another planet, trying to start a new life on a new world.

As a woman with a strong personality, Cherijo stepped on a few toes, mainly Drs. Mayer and Rogan. Really, though, she never had a chance with Dr. Mayer, who seemed to hate the very sight of her. But when a patient nearly died because of Dr. Rogan's failure to diagnose the patient correctly, Cherijo read him the riot act and earned herself an implacable enemy. 

Cherijo's father found out where she was and sent her threatening messages demanding that she come back home. He even sent people to kidnap her. But Cherijo laughed at his threats and continued on with her work at the clinic, treating whatever beings showed up in need of medical care. 

Most of her patients were not humans but that did not slow Cherijo down. She seemed to have an instinct for what all her patients who came to the clinic needed. That is until Alun Karas, a furry being who accidentally became covered with some kind of plant sap and had a reaction to it. No matter what she tried and for reasons she didn't understand, Alun Karas steadily went downhill, eventually dying. The medical tests showed no source of infection. But even worse, it soon became apparent that whatever had infected Karas was now spreading throughout the city. And none of the doctors have a clue as to what organism or toxin is responsible for the epidemic. Together, they are working to try to understand this sudden illness, but soon most of the doctors and nurses are infected too. Cherijo is unaffected and is bearing the weight of trying to crack this puzzle before the whole city is wiped out.

This was an OK story. Long, though, nearly 400 pages, way longer than it needed to be, I think. The epidemic section was way too long, it just goes on and on about how big of a puzzle the infection is. I found the story slow paced. And I never really liked the main character, Cherijo. I guess a lot of readers do like her story because it became a long series consisting of ten novels.

Gateways

 

By F. Paul Wilson

A Repairman Jack novel

Jack hasn't been as close to his dad as he probably should be. He knows his dad was disappointed that Jack didn't come home for his sister's funeral. Even so, when he gets word that his dad was in a vehicle crash, he wants his brother Tom Jr to be the one to go down to Florida to check on their father. But Tom Jr says he's tied up with business and it's up to Jack to step in.

Tom Sr has been in a coma since the crash, which happened on an unfrequented rural road. The circumstances of the crash are mysterious and will remain so until Tom Sr comes out of his coma.

Jack flies down to Florida and visits his dad in the hospital. The dad is not conscious but still has a visitor, his next door neighbor, an elderly lady named Anya. She and Tom Sr live in a community for retirees called Gateways.

After stopping by the hospital, Jack goes to his dad's house to stay while his dad is in the hospital. He notices that his dad's neighbor Anya's house is surrounded by lush green vegetation even though everyone's lawn in the community is brown and dead because of an extended drought. When he asks Anya about it, she has no explanation but assures him she is not watering her plants on the sly, against the water conservation orders.

Anya is not the only odd duck in this story. A group of strange, deformed people live in the swamp, led by a young woman with a mob of pure white hair who goes by the name of Semelee. She and her gang of thugs are somehow involved with the dad's accident. She also has weird, uncanny powers that enable her to control animals and insects. She is aware of Jack's arrival to Gateways and she has decided he is the man she fated to be with. Which is going to come as a surprise to Jack, who doesn't even know of her existence. And he already has a wife and child waiting for him back home.

I really enjoyed this story up to almost the end. It's part of a series but this was my first read of a book from the series. I found that, even though I hadn't read the previous novels, knowledge of the previous books was not needed to enjoy this story.

However, the ending was disappointing as it ends in a big battle with the bad guys. Bullets are flying, people are getting hurt. I just skimmed through the battle stuff to get to the results. 

I guess we're supposed to hate little Semelee but I just felt sorry for her. I wish the author had come up with a better fate for her than what he did. The same for Devil, the alligator, who was given a cruel and painful fate simply because he was a big, dangerous gator. His crimes weren't even of his own creation, he was simply a tool used by a pathetic, confused child. 

You Shouldn't Have Come Here

 

 By Jeneva Rose

Grace Evans has come to Dubois, Wyoming for some rest and relaxation and to enjoy the country scenery and breathe some fresh country air. She has a reservation at a ranch where she will be staying in a bedroom of the ranch house.

Her host is Calvin Wells who also lives in the ranch house. He is a handsome and strapping young man and is thrilled to have someone as beautiful as Grace staying with him for a few weeks.

But there's problems. His friends and family are a bit less welcoming as one could hope for. And one of his friends is frankly hostile to Grace's presence in Calvin's home. Charlotte is clearly giving off ex-girlfriend-hoping-to-get-back-together vibes. Calvin, however, is just as clearly indifferent to whatever Charlotte's hopes might be, calling her a just part-time ranch hand.

Another problematic person is Calvin's brother, Joe, who comes off as a bit nutty. His relationship with his brother seems a little mysterious to Grace and he also seems a little too interested in his brother's houseguest. 

Grace doesn't feel quite comfortable with Calvin and his brother. But that doesn't stop her from having an intimate moment with Calvin. Which Calvin misconstrues as more than just a one night stand. He thinks it is the beginning of a whole new relationship and is already making plans for Grace to stay on the ranch permanently. But Grace is not enamored with Calvin and refuses his further advances, something that Calvin is unwilling to accept. 

Trouble is brewing on this Wyoming ranch.

This book is not a winner. I found myself skipping about half of the book, just wanting to finish it. I bought it new and didn't want to feel like I wasted my money by not finishing it. But it was boring and predictable and the two main characters are completely unlikeable. The book, almost from the beginning, gives hints that Grace is a phony. The only thing that actually surprised me a little was that she was not motivated by any honorable reason.

Also check out this review by Kirkus Reviews.

Twice

 

By Mitch Albom

Alfie Logan's mom died when he was just a youngster. The trauma of losing his mom turned on a strange power in him. Alfie woke up the next morning and discovered his mom hadn't actually died. She noticed his confusion and knew what had happened because she had the same ability, an ability that gave the possessor the power to travel back in time and get a redo. As she explained it, "This is something you're going to be able to do the rest of your life. Get second chances...It's a gift. A power. Some people in our family get it...But it won't fix everything, Alfie. The second time won't always be better than the first. Don't try to change everything, OK? Don't correct every mistake. Don't take advantage of people. Don't use your power for money. Be careful." 

So do something stupid? Jump back before the stupid action and just not do that. But you only do that for each event once. So if you went back and changed something and it didn't work out you couldn't go back again. 

Alfie's grandmother also had this time travel ability. And she warned Alfie that if he cheats on a lover and then tries to time jump to set things right, the person he cheated on would never love him again, no matter what. 

Given that Alfie inherited this ability at a very young age, he naturally used it for silly things. But he also found out that he could not prevent someone from dying. No matter how he changed the circumstances, the person will still die. Of a different cause, but they would still die. He learned this when he tried to save a friend who enlisted in the military. The man was up for two positions, one on a ship and the other at a training center. He chose the ship duty because it sounded more exciting. But that ship was attacked and he died. So Alfie went back in time and talked his friend in signing up for the training position instead.  But friend died anyway, in an accident, on the same day and at the same time. 

Back when Alfie was a kid, he had a friend who was a girl that he really liked but her family moved away. But they reconnected as teens and Alfie fell in love with her and used his power to get closer to her, but not particularly successfully. Eventually though, it all worked out and they moved in together. Marriage followed and then the girl, Gianna started talking about wanting to have kids. Alfie was not keen on the idea, though. They cooled off toward each other. 

Alfie got involved with another woman and when that affair ended, he did his usual time jump to reset everything but discovered his grandmother was right. Gianna no longer cared about him and had reconnected with an old boyfriend. The marriage was over. 

Forward a few years and Alfie is in trouble with the police because he used his time travel ability to win big at a casino to the tune of two million dollars and he had wired the two million dollars to his ex-wife, Gianna, implicating her what the police viewed as cheating trick pulled on the casino. Now they are both being questioned by the police, even though Alfie assures them she is not involved. Gianna denies all knowledge of Alfie's casino shenanigans but also says she and Alfie were never lovers, were never married and she has no idea why he would wire all that money to her.

The whole story is framed inside a notebook written by Alfie, the story of his life. The times he used his magic power to reset time, to improve his life, to correct mistakes but mainly to pursue and win the love of Gianna that he stupidly threw away for a faithless other woman. He presents this notebook to the investigator who is interviewing him after the casino incident. As he is led away in handcuffs he tells the detective to finish reading the notebook and it will answer all his questions about the money and the casino and why it all happened.

This was a fascinating story about how even second chances are not enough to make things right. I think the author gave this story a lot of thought. He made his hero a person of good character because, in the hands of an evil person, a power like Alfie's could cause a lot of chaos in the world. Alfie uses his power in fairly harmless ways. For instance to impress a girl who is likes a certain song, he time jumps back to learn the song and how to play the piano so that when he encounters this girl later, he can impress her by playing and singing it for her.

I really enjoyed this story even though the premise is so wacky. 

The author is a very successful writer and several of his books have been made into movies. It is in the works for Twice to also be made into a movie.

Here is a review of the book by Kirkus Reviews.

Less

 

By Andrew Sean Greer

Pulitzer Prize winning novel of 2018.

Arthur Less is minor author who is soon to turn fifty and who feels like a failure at everything but especially at life and work. He has a lot of baggage from two of the most important relationships in his life. First was Robert, who was a married man but who fell deeply for young, handsome Arthur. Robert was a famous and successful poet and a Pulitzer Prize winner. That relationship lasted for many years but eventually Arthur felt bored and eventually moved on to Freddy. That relationship also ended and Freddy has invited Arthur to attend his wedding to another person. Arthur needs a good excuse not to attend so he accepts several invitations to lectures overseas that will take him from his home in California to Mexico, Italy, Germany, France, India, Morocco and Japan. 

Even though Arthur views himself as a failure, his travels introduce him to lots of new people and he learns that he is not quite the loser he has been picturing himself to be, despite some of the mistakes and misadventures he has on his travels.

The book started out slow and when I started reading it, I didn't know the main character was a gay man. I can't say I find the romantic intrigues of homosexuals particularly interesting, whether male or female. I set the book aside for several weeks after starting it. I did finally pick it back up and, as I got further into it, I started to enjoy it more and more. It is mildly funny and Arthur's dim view of himself doesn't improve until he reaches the end of his travels and realizes what he actually accomplished. Upon hearing that his old lover Robert has had a stroke, Arthur heads back to California with a better sense of himself and of his past relationships. To quote from the novel, it turns out that, "happiness is not bullshit."

According to Google's AI, Less won the Pulitzer because 'it offered a witty, tender and deeply humane exploration of aging, middle-class heartbreak and queer identity. The [Pulitzer] board praised the novel as a "scintillating satire" that expertly balances broad comedy with poignant reflections on the human heart.'

Here is a review of the novel by Kirkus Reviews.

The Virgin of Small Plains

 

By Nancy Pickard

During a bad snowstorm, a rancher (who is also the sheriff) and his sons are out in the weather dealing with their cattle when they find the nude body of a young woman laying in the snow in their cow pasture. There's blood on the snow and it appears she has been sexually assaulted. The sheriff doesn't know who she is but his two teenage sons do but they say nothing.

The younger boy stays home, per his father's orders, but the older teen goes with his father when they take her body to the doctor's office into nearby small town. 

Meanwhile, the doctor's teenage daughter has a visitor in her bedroom, Mitch, the handsome son of the local judge. Abby and Mitch have been making out and Abby has decided she is ready to go all the way. Problem is neither teen has any condoms. Abby knows her dad has condoms in a closet off the exam room. So Mitch sneaks downstairs, looking for the condoms. As he is poking around downstairs, the sheriff drives up to the doctor's house and Mitch ducks into the supply office to hide. He was able to peer through a crack at the edge of the door and saw the dead girl being carried into the exam room. And then Mitch sees something so shocking and unexpected that he actually gasps in horror. But fortunately he isn't heard and he is able to sneak away later. He was so shocked but what he had seen, he didn't go back upstairs to Abby's room and he ran out into the snowy night without his coat or shoes. And he never saw Abby again or returned back his home town until about seventeen years later. 

The girl is a stranger to the area and is never identified. Her body is buried and a tombstone placed on her grave. Oddly, a legend sprung up about the girl, that a visit to her tomb could heal the sick and the trouble. She became known at the Virgin of Small Plains.

Abby never got over Mitch leaving town without talking to her or telling her what happened that night. She didn't know his parents had quickly hustled him out of the town when he told them what he had seen happen in the doctor's office. The judge informed his son that the doctor and the sheriff were denying what Mitch claimed he had seen. Further, they threatened to throw the blame for the girl's death on Mitch. So to keep their son safe, they were sending Mitch to school far away.

The story moves from the teenage days of Abby, Mitch and the sheriff's two teenage sons to seventeen years later. In all that time, the girl's death has never been solved. Abby has remained single as have the sheriff's sons, Patrick and Rex. Mitch has never returned home, not even for his own mother's funeral.

One day at the cemetery, Abby happens to encounter the now former sheriff's wife who is visiting the grave of the unknown girl. She knows about the stories of healings and her husband has been suffering greatly from the pain of arthiritis. So she is asking the Virgin to help her husband feel better. She and Abby begin casually chatting and the night the Virgin was found dead comes up and some of the things the sheriff's wife says stirs something in Abby. After the other woman leaves, Abby makes a promise to the Virgin to find out who she was.

But sometimes it's better to let sleeping dogs lie. Or in this case sleeping Virgins.

This was a very interesting mystery story. There are several suspects and several secrets surrounding the dead girl's time in the town. The main suspects are the three teenage boys, Mitch, Pat and Rex. It turns out that all three boys were involved with girl in the months before she died. And all three boys knew who she was and where she came from. But they never spoke up about it. Seventeen years later though, times are changing in Small Plains. The Virgin has gained some internet fame and people are coming to town to visit her grave and ask for her blessing and healing. Interest is rising and questions are being asked. And Mitch has finally come home and locals can't figure out what he is up to, including Abby, whose heart was broken when he left without a word so long ago.

Here is a review of the novel by Publishers Clearing House.

B.C. "Life is a dollar twenty-five cent paperback"

 

By Johnny Hart

From the B.C. comic strip, copyright 1970. It comes with a note that it has two former titles: B.C./"LIFE IS A SEVENTY-FIVE CENT PAPERBACK" and B.C./"LIFE IS A NINETY-FIVE CENT PAPERBACK."

This is one of Johnny Hart's funniest collections of daily comic strips of his I have read so far. I had a hard time limiting the number of examples to put one here.

Nothing to Fear but Ferrets

 By Linda O. Johnston

A Kendra Ballantyne, Pet-Sitter Mystery

Kendra is studying in preparation for a bid to regain her license to practice law which she lost when she was wrongly accused of being a murderer. 

After losing her lawyer job, Kendra moved into the garage apartment of her home and rented the actual house to a young couple, Charlotte and Yul.

Charlotte is a former contestant on a reality TV dating show. As the winner, she was awarded one million dollars but lost a lover when she was informed that the rule was the winner could take the money or take the lover but couldn't take both. So Charlotte chose the money, which is how she affords the rent on Kendra's large and luxurious home. However, the catch to the money was a rule that she had to give up her love match, Chad, and never seem him again or she would forfeit the money. She picked the money, later claiming that Chad was a phony whose only reason for being on the show was for the exposure which he hoped would help his career in show business.

Charlotte and Yul enjoyed holding parties and one night Chad showed up at one of their parties uninvited. When Charlotte discovered he was there, they got into an argument and she sent him packing. But then Chad turned up dead, laying on the floor of the house, with Charlotte's and Yul's pet ferrets released from their pen and nibbling on his dead body.

Charlotte talks Kendra into investigating the murder even though Kendra is not certain that about Charlotte's or Yul's innocence. She does it anyway because if it is determined that the ferrets caused Chad's death, then the ferrets will be euthanized. Which is not what either Charlotte, Yul or Kendra want.

This was a pretty good mystery even if the murderer improbably tried to affix blame to the ferrets. The story is also mildly humorous which I felt added to the story.                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Wednesday : A Novelization of Season One

 

Adapted by Tehlor Kay Mejia

After teenage oddball Wednesday Addams was kicked out of school for releasing piranha fish into the school's swimming pool to punish some boys who had been bullying her younger brother Pugsley, Wednesday was been enrolled in Nevermore Academy by her parents, Morticia and Gomez, who also attended Nevermore when they were teenagers.

Wednesday is not happy to be placed in this school intended for kids who are not ordinary. This school has students who include vampires, werewolves, witches, shapeshifters, psychics and more. 

It soon becomes apparent that something is amiss at Nevermore and in the local village of Jericho. It doesn't take Wednesday long to ferret out the rumors of a monstrous creature haunting the countryside and killing people. So she takes it upon herself to discover the truth about this supposed monster. 

Which she does when she witnesses the monster murder a fellow student. However, the school officials insist that the student, Rowan,was not killed and he is subsequently seen packing up his things and going into town to board a train home. Wednesday knows what she saw and finding Rowan's bloody spectacles on the ground where the attack occurred proves it was not just something she imagined.

Finding the truth is going to be difficult since some of the teachers and the principal are part of the cover-up. As Wednesday digs deeper into the secrets of Nevermore, not only is she gathering the evidence she needs to track down tbe monster, whom she suspects is a fellow student, but she also finds herself gaining friends and becoming part of a community, something she never really expected or wanted.

This was an OK mystery story. Wednesday, unfortunately, keeps accusing the wrong people of being the monster and it makes her look like a fool, in my opinion. 

Another thing that I found rather sad is the serious nature of the story, with very little of the fun of the original Addams cartoons nor the silliness of the original TV series. True there are some lighter moments that hark back to the roots of the Addams family, but they are scarce. I just found the story to be too serious for me. 

The Lotus Palace

 

By Jeannie Lin

Yue-ying is servant to her beautiful sister, Mingyu, who is a courtesan in a brothel in China, The Lotus Palace. Yue-ying used to be a prostitute until her sister bought her and brought her to live with her in the Lotus Palace. 

Mingyu is the star of the Lotus Palace, being very popular with the men who visit the house. Yue-ying looks a lot like her sister but has a large birthmark on her face that most customers find upsetting. So she serves as her sister's personal servant.

Bai Huang is a man of noble birth who visits the Lotus Palace to spend his time and money on Mingyu. He is really there for Yue-ying but she keeps him at arm's distance, choosing to disbelieve his interest in her is sincere and not some kind of joke or setup. Mingyu knows of his interest in her sister and it bothers her and creates some distance in her relationship with Yue-ying.

The Lotus Palace is not the only brothel in the area. Huilan was the famous courtesan and main attraction at the House of a Hundred Songs. Huilan and Mingyu knew of each other and sometimes spent time together at parties and other social events. When Huilan was found murdered in her bed, it was only to be expected that the authorities would have questions for both Mingyu and Yue-ying, hoping they might know of Huilan's activities before her death. Both women have nothing of consequence to tell the investigators. 

Yue-ying decides to do a little investigating on her own and discovers that Bai Huang is also investigating Huilan's death and also the death of an unknown man on the nearby waterfront. Pirates are not unknown in the area and the man's death could have some connection to piracy and human trafficking.

This was an OK read. The romance between a humble servant/former prostitute was a tad unbelievable. Housefuls of beautiful, willing women and the rich guy chooses the woman with the huge birthmark on her face.

Another problem I had with the story is the killer turns out to be a very minor character in the story that we never hear very much at all about. 

Overall, I'd say I liked the story. Apparently it is one of the first books in a series of mystery stories set in the Pingkang li area. 

Shadow Hunter

 

By BR Kingsolver

When Erin was a preteen, she began to come into her magical powers and was adopted by the Illuminati and trained to be a Hunter, an assassin who uses both magic and martial arts to eliminate evildoers who are upsetting the balance. Or so she was told.

Turned out all that was a lie. She was actually eliminating road blocks to the Illuminati's plans for world domination. She found this out when she was sent to murder William Strickland. According to her master, Strickland was a sorcerer and practitioner of the Dark Arts and that he had created a superweapon that the Illuminati wanted. 

As Strickland lay dying from her attack, he told her the nature of the weapon, a small crystal ball: "It shows truth. Look through it when a man speaks, and it shows his lies. Look at a spell or a book or a work of art to see how true it is. Watch an Illuminati ritual and see the blood and the Darkness hidden beneath the surface."

He also warns Erin that of the crystal's other power: "Take that to your masters, and they will destroy it. But in the process, it will destroy them."

Erin takes the crystal and views Strickland through it. It shows her that he was dying. But she also saw: "...he was a wizard of the Light, and felt, though I couldn't tell how, that everything he had told me was the truth."

Leaving the dying man, Erin is confronted by his daughter:

'"He said you would come, and you would kill him."

"He may yet live," I said, "but he is dying."

"And you have the crystal?"

"Yes."

"Then you need this as well," she said holding out a book.

. . . The book was black leather trimmed in gold. The title, in the secret language of the Illuminati, said, "The History of the Illuminati."

"Read it," she said. "He said—my father said—that you must read it." She gave me a grin that was so malevolent I took a step back. "They will kill you when you take it to them, whether you read it or not. I hope you're stupid enough to believe their lies."'

Erin does read the book and discovers Strickland hadn't lied about the true nature of the Illuminati and what she had been doing for them: "Rather than being a force for the Light, I had advanced the reach of the Dark."

She takes the crystal to her master and leaves it in his hands, without the warning that Strickland gave her. True to what he said, crystal detonates and leaves the hidden city of the Illuminati vaporized with no trace left to show it had ever existed. The location where it had stood was now pristine wilderness.

Even though that was the end of the Illuminati stronghold, Erin knows the members are scattered all through the world in the places of influence and power and wealth. Her split from the group has put her life in danger and she goes into hiding, ending up in Westport, a city on the western coast of the USA. She quickly finds a job as a bartender and just as quickly discovers that Westport is a hive of magical activity and conflict between supernaturals like werewolves and vampires. Even the bar where she works is part of it, a haven for magically gifted people like herself, mages, wizards, shapeshifters, even vampires occasionally.

But that's not all she discovers. An Illuminati assassin, a Hunter, is in town and is behind a number of mysterious deaths among the supernatural communities. It appears the Illuminati are up to their usual tricks, fomenting disorder in order to gain some kind of advantage in Westport and increase their influence. Erin finds herself entangled in this conflict and trying to help her newfound friends and community survive the Illuminati machinations and still keep her presence hidden from the Hunter and his Illuminati cohorts.

This was an OK read. It goes from Erin learning how to pretend to be an ordinary person to battles with supernaturals that show she certainly is not a ordinary person. Which quickly becomes apparent to those around her and raises many questions about her past that she, for her own safety, will not share.

There are so many supernatural battle scenes, which are just like all battle scenes, just with magic thrown in. To me, no more interesting than all fictional battle scenes, boring. So, bartend for a bit, meet some folks for a bit, battle. Repeat over and over again. 

Normally, I would classify this as a book that would appeal mostly to female readers. But the battle after battle scenes reads more like a book for male readers, who are more inclined to enjoy that than most female readers. Yes, I know there are exceptions, whatever.

The Sunday Philosophy Club

 

By Alexander McCall Smith

Isabel and a companion are at a concert when they see a young man fall to his death from the upper deck of the hall. 

Witnessing a tragedy like that leads Isabel into a an investigation of the man and what may have led to his death and whether it was an accident or something else.

Being a woman of wealth and means, Isabel has the time to undertake such an investigation. Her friends don't think it is a good idea, but she ignores their advice. Her inquiries lead her to conclude that the dead did not fall, that there were reasons he might have been pushed, mainly insider trading. His position at the firm where he worked may have led him to suspect that people in the business were using inside information to take advantage of the markets.

Was this why he died? Or was it a romantic entanglement? Or perhaps it truly was just that he lost his balance and fell? Isabel stirs things up and finds more than one villain. And her own life may be in danger as a consequence.

This was an OK mystery story. The evildoers are unmasked but oddly no one is brought to justice, which made for a rather weak ending, I think.

Here is a review of the novel by Kirkus Reviews.

Island of the Sequined Love Nun

 

By Christopher Moore

Tuck is a jet pilot who kills his career when he gets loaded and crashes the company jet while having sex with a prostitute. Desperate for work, Tuck takes a job as a pilot for a Pacific island-based medical charity.

The charity is run by a doctor and his nurse/wife. But it doesn't take Tuck long to figure out that these two are up to something unsavory. Like how can a small, local charity afford a Learjet? What is in the coolers that they transport via the jet to Japan? Something that is so special that the wife guards it with a gun.

Eventually Tuck figures out that the two Westerners are taking advantage of the natives' cargo cult and are using it to bamboozle the islanders into becoming organ donors and that the people don't really understand how they are being used. It all comes to a head for Tuck when he realizes the doctor removed the corneas of a little boy for transport to Japan and they justified it to him by claiming the boy was already blind and didn't need his corneas. He also realizes it is up to him to put a stop to their organ-harvesting operation.

This was a very amusing story and it has lots of funny moments. For example, two native men are talking about a People Magazine and what the one who could read is sharing from it:

"'But look!" Malink pointed to a picture of a man with unnaturally large ears, "This man is a king and he wishes to be a tampon. It is quoted."

Sarapul scrunched up his face . . . while he tried to figure out what, exactly, a tampon was. Finally he said, "I was a tampon once, back in the old days, before you were born. All warriors became tampons. It was better then."

"You have never been a tampon," Malink stated, although he couldn't be sure. "Only a king may be a tampon."'

This too, when Tuck gets grabbed by the locals and tied up:

'The native said something in his own language, which Tuck took to be "Cut him down," because a second later he found himself falling into the arms of four strong islanders who lowered him to the ground.

Tucker's arms and legs burned as the blood rushed back into them. Above him he saw a circle of moonlit brown faces. He managed to grab enough breath to squeak, "Soon as I'm on my feet, your asses are mine. You all might as well just go practice falling down for a while so you'll be used to it. Just order the body bags now 'cause when I'm done, you're going to look like piles of chocolate pudding. They'll be cleaning you up with shovels—you . . . " Tuck's breath caught in his throat and he passed out.

"Malink looked at his old friend Favo and smiled. "Excellent threat," he said.

"Most excellent threat," Favo said.

Sarapul pushed his way through the kneeling men. "He's dead. Let's eat him."

"He no like that," Kimi said. "Not even for free."'

And here, a reporter is musing on his job:

'The notes read: "They caught the pig thief. Now what?"

You could run down leads, pound the pavement, check all your facts with two sources, then structure your meticulously gathered information into the inverted pyramid form and what you got was: The pig's owner had gotten drunk and beat up his wife, so she sold his pig to someone on the outer islands and bought a used stun gun . . .  The next time her husband got rough, a group of Japanese tourists found him by the side of the road, sizzling in the dirt like a strip of frying bacon. Mistaking him for a street performer, the tourists clapped joyously, took pictures of each other standing beside the electrocuted man, and gave his wife five dollars. The whole intrigue had been exposed when police found the pig-stealing wife in front of the Continental Hotel charging tourists a dollar apiece to watch her zap her husband's twitching supine body. The stun gun was confiscated, no charges were pressed, and the wife beater was pronounced unharmed by a Peace Corps volunteer, although he did need to be reminded several times of his name, where he lived, and how many children he had.'

 It's a funny story, even if the subject matter is rather horrible and very sad.

Here is a review of the story by Kirkus Reviews.