Shining Through

 

By Susan Isaacs

Story of a secretary in the 1940s who becomes a spy for the Allies in World War II. 

Linda Voss was not as lovely as her beautiful mother. But she was still quite attractive with her fluffy blonde hair and sparkling brown eyes. And unlike her rather dim mother, she was intelligent and had an inquiring mind. Due to the untimely death of her father, Linda had to get a job right out of high school to help support her mother who never got over her husband's death and turned to alcohol to ease her pain.

Because Linda's grandmother on her father's side was originally from Berlin, Germany, Linda grew up to be fluent in ordinary German, which helped her land a job at a law firm as a bilingual secretary. Her boss, lawyer John Berringer, was also fluent in German and dealt with the firm's overseas customers in Germany and Austria. 

John was the subject of many broken hearts among the female members of the staff. He was devastatingly handsome and had his pick of the ladies. But he was completely, deeply in love with his wife, Nan, who was the daughter of his boss, Edward Leland. Linda was one of the smitten ladies of the law firm.

Then Nan runs off to Las Vegas for a divorce, having decided she was in love with someone else, leaving John heartbroken. Linda saw her chance to be closer to John and did her best to comfort him. Eventually, they became lovers and she became pregnant and he married her. But she always knew Nan would be the one he held dearest. 

After she has a miscarriage, Linda came home early one day and caught John and Nan snuggled up together on the couch. And John declared he was thinking of getting back together with Nan. Linda finally admitted to herself that her marriage was over and she volunteered to be a spy in Berlin, where she was employed as a cook in a German official's villa. The official was known to bring home important papers and Linda was supposed to get hold of those papers and send any information that might be helpful to the Allies. 

In some ways I really liked this story. But in another way, it was disappointing. Because I thought it was an espionage story about a woman spy. But the spy part doesn't appear until the last quarter of the novel. Most of the book is about Linda and John and their relationship. The spying part is practically an afterthought to the rest of the story. 

But on the other hand, the love story of John and Linda is sad and complicated and interesting. As Linda explains to John's boss, Edward:

       "I was carrying on with Mr. Berringer—" 

"This really isn't necessary."

"I know, but please listen, anyway. I got pregnant, Mr. Leland." His black eyes widened, not because he was surprised; I'm sure he wasn't. He was surprised I was talking about it. "I know it's something people don't discuss in polite company—but I'm not polite company. Anyway, I'm sure you've already figured out Mr. . . .that John didn't marry me for my money or my great mind. He married me because he had to."

 

So even though this story is not really a spy story at all, I still enjoyed it a lot. 

On a side note, Linda's father has an interesting opinion on American Republicans. This book dates from the 1980s, but his opinion of Republicans applies to them today:

"Pal, there's only one group in the world richer and rottener than the Yankees—Republicans. They don't care about anything but holding on to everything they got. They don't give a damn about the little guy, and don't let anyone con you into believing different."

Here is a review by Publishers Weekly. 

Where'd You Go, Bernadette

 

By Maria Semple

Bernadette was an architect who gained a modest amount of fame early in her career. But when her daughter Bee was born with a life-threatening heart problem, Bernadette centered her life on caring for her gravely ill child.

Fortunately, Bee, after many surgeries, grew up to be an intelligent and enthusiastic student, earning an invitation to attend a exclusive East Coast boarding school in her early teenage years. Unfortunately, at the same time, Bernadette's life was falling apart and her marriage to a successful Microsoft executive was in serious trouble.

After rather sad and ridiculous clashes with a neighbor woman and rather vague threats of suicide, Bernadette's spouse decided she should be committed to a mental care facility. And that is when Bernadette vanished.

Bee refused to believe her beloved mother would just disappear and leave Bee behind. After she went off to her boarding school, she received a packet of letters and other correspondence from her mother and about her mother. After reading everything in the packet, Bee became convinced that Bernadette had taken a trip to Antarctica, a trip the whole family was planning to take as a reward for Bee for her scholastic achievements. But the trip was cancelled due to Bernadette's disappearance. 

Bee was so distracted by her search for her missing mother, that the boarding school sent her home to her father. After the father read the packet of information, he was also convinced Bernadette had traveled to Antarctica without them. Further digging revealed that although she did travel to Antarctica, she vanished somewhere off the ship on its return voyage. The cruise line assumed she was swept overboard during the rough crossing. But Bee absolutely refused to believe that was the case. So her father, in order to give her closure, booked them passage on another cruise to Antarctica.

This was a fairly good story. Tad disappointing, though. As per usual, the blurbs gushed about what a funny story it was: "Divinely funny" "Delightful" "Uproarious" "Fresh and funny" "Comic caper". But it wasn't funny. At most it was mildly amusing. I also don't care for stories told in bits and pieces. I skipped a some of the more boring items. 

We are told over and over what a genius Bernadette is. But she acts like a total airhead, getting into pointless disagreements with the neighbors and giving her private information to some stranger online. Really, all the characters are pretty annoying, with the exception of Bee, who never loses faith in her mother. 

Here is a review by Kirkus.

Wicked Intentions

 

By Elizabeth Hoyt

Temperance Dews works in her family's orphanage, situated in one of the worst, most dangerous areas of London in the mid 1700s. A young, beautiful widow, she carries massive guilt surrounding the death of her husband. 

Lord Caire is a nobleman of sleasy repute who has come to Mrs. Dews seeking a guide to the area, offering to pay her for her help, money that the orphanage dearly needs since it lost its major patron, who died. Lord Caire is looking to find out who murdered his mistress who lived in the area. 

But the woman's murder was just one of a several murders of young women, mostly prostitutes, in the area. This is a bad neighborhood, but not to the degree that locals will accept a serial killer. So Lord Caire and Temperance canvas the neighborhood, trying to get a bead on the mad killer behind these brutal murders. And since this is a romance novel, of course they fall in love in the process. 

The idea that Lord Caire would choose a young chaste woman as his guide to a dangerous part of town is silly plot device, a lazy way to bring the two main characters together.

 I was pretty sure the story would have lots of scenes of passionate sex between Caire and Dews and it did, but most of that was in the last quarter of the book. Which suited me because I skip the sex scenes because I find them boring and rather ridiculous. As far as the plot goes, it was pretty interesting if a tad unbelievable, especially the identity of the killer. 

Here is a review of the novel by Publishers Weekly.

Discount Armageddon

 

By Seanan McGuire

Cryptid:  an animal (such as Sasquatch or the Loch Ness Monster) that has been claimed to exist but never proven to exist. 

Cryptozoologist: a person who studies cryptids.

Like Verity Price. Who lives in New York City and works as a waitress but whose true profession is studying and discovering and helping all the cryptids (and there are a lot) who make the city their home. Indeed, most of the girls who work are her job at Dave's Fish and Strips are cryptids. There's Carol, the gorgon. Candy the dragon princess. Marcy the oread, some kind of mineral-based stony girl. And Istas the waheela, a sort of werebear. All of these girls disguise themselves to pass as human. And some, like Istas, are shapeshifters. 

Cryptozoology is Verity's family's vocation, one she was raised to become from childhood. But she would much rather be a professional ballroom dancer and she dances under the name of Valerie Pryor and she moved to New York to be closer to the ballroom dancing scene. But she still works in the family business as a cryptozoologist, tracking and studying all the cryptids in the city. 

Her family has a long history as cryptozoologists, going back generations. At one point they were part of an organization, the Covenant, whose main goal is locating and exterminating cryptids they view as dangerous. Like dragons, which they managed to wipe out. But Verity's ancestors realized that many cryptids are intelligent beings that, if left alone, are harmless. And so they left the Covenant, which put them on the Covenant's hit list as traitors to the grand cause. 

Between waitressing, dancing and training to keep her fighting skills topnotch, Verity has come to realize that someone is causing many cryptid people to disappear. She soon stumbles upon who she thinks is the cause, a Covenant agent newly arrived in New York, Dominic De Luca. But as he explains, he has only killed a few non-sapient cryptid animals. Further inquires reveal that the cryptids who have gone missing are all young, female virgin-type creatures. And further investigation seems to point to a snake cult sacrificing these girls to a dragon who is living under New York City. 

So Verity has her work cut out for her: she has to protect and warn the local cryptid girls, stop the snake cult from killing people, locate the dragon without turning it lose on the city, as in Godzilla time, and keep the Covenant agent from killing all her cryptid friends and coworkers and from killing the last surviving dragon left in the world. 

This was a fun read, exciting and a bit silly with lots of whacky characters, the whackiest being Verity herself. She hurls herself into danger like a daredevil and shares her apartment with a tribe of sentient mice who have formed a religion around the mundane aspects of her life.  And she works with a group of cryptids who know about her family's past association with the Covenant, which causes them to view her as a possible danger to their very lives, which makes for some tension at her job. 

Oh, and of course, she falls for the Covenant agent and they end up in bed together. Naturally.

Here is a review of the novel by Publishers Weekly.

Caveman's Valentine

 

By George Dawes Green

Romulus Ledbetter lives in a cave in a park in New York City. He could have had a career as a talented pianist but instead mental illness rules his life. His daughter Lulu and his wife Sheila know where he is but he resists their efforts to bring him in out of the cold, preferring to remain in his cave where his delusions keep him well entertained. He is an independent and stubborn person. 

But then someone dumps a dead body near his cave. When he learns a fellow homeless man was distraught over the death of the dead man, Romulus fantasies begin to center on solving the dead man's murder. Which leads him on a journey to the estate of a wealthy and famous photographer that Romulus believes was responsible for the man's death. 

This was an okay read. The idea of a mentally ill amateur detective is different, true. But I found Romulus to be a sad character and his delusions rather boring. I skipped most of his insane rants against his big bugbear, Stuyvesant, a creature he blames for pretty much all the ills of the modern world. Which he thinks are being caused by Y-rays Stuyvesant broadcasts from the Chrysler Building. Yeah.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

The Manual of Detection

 

By Jedediah Berry

Charles Unwin is a clerk at the Agency, a detective agency. He writes up the case files for one detective, Travis Sivart. He prides himself on the work he does but lately he has been entertaining a fantasy of just getting on the train and leaving his job and the city behind. 

We are never told the name of the city, but it is large gloomy place where the rain never seems to end.  In addition to his fantasy of walking away from the city and his job at the Agency, Unwin has become obsessed with a young woman he has noticed at the train station. She is there every day, seemingly waiting for someone to arrive who never does. 

Unwin has also had a dream in which he comes home to find Travis Sivart taking a bath in Unwin's bathtub. Sivart tells Unwin to remember two things, Chapter Eighteen and that Sivart was wrong about the girl. He doesn't say what girl, just that he was wrong about her.

Unwin arrives at work to find he has been promoted from clerk to detective. But he doesn't want to be a detective and believes the promotion to be a mistake. So he goes to see the man in charge of the detectives to inform him about the error but finds the man is dead in the man's office. And Unwin is now in charge of discovering the killer while being suspected of being the killer and of finding where Sivart has gone. He also has to figure out who all these mysterious women are who have suddenly entered his life, including the woman at the train station; his new assistant, Emily Doppel; and infamous criminal Cleopatra Greenwood; and one Hilda Palsgrave. Palsgrave used be one of the main attractions at Caligari's Carnival until Caligari's disappearance left the carnival in the hands of organized crime gang led by Enoch Hoffman, a biloquist, and twin brothers Jasper and Josiah Rook. 

As Unwin's unwanted investigation continues, he finds that Sivart wasn't just wrong about the "girl." He was wrong about almost all the crimes he solved. And that someone at the top knows that and wants it to stay that way. And the rain continues to fall, making everything and everyone wet and cold. 

This was a fairly good read. I think I am not the right audience for this book though. I found it rather slow and I found the constant rain, which is like one of the main characters in the story, depressing. Just too cold, wet and gloomy for my taste. But I think a lot of readers would enjoy this mysterious, damp story.

Check out the review by Michael Moorcock in The Guardian.

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)

 

By Jerome K. Jerome

Published in 1889, this is story of three friends taking a boat trip on the Thames River in Britain. 

One evening, while sitting around, three friends decided they needed a break from everyday life in the big city (London). And a relaxing trip on the river with outdoor life and camping and visiting historic places seemed like the very thing required. So George, Harry and the author, who is only referred to as J, gather all the essentials (mostly food) vital for three healthy young fellows on holiday and they rent a boat and set off for a carefree river trip. Of course, it is never quite as carefree as one might wish, due to their own ineptitude, the weather, and the vagaries of the big river. And the dog, Montmorency. The author includes various humorous stories and some history of the locales they pass through and mentions particular inns and taverns that can be visited today, over one hundred years later.

Quite a charming and amusing story with a bit of British history thrown in, I very much enjoyed this account of Jerome's trip on the river with his two friends and the dog, a fox terrier of typical terrier temperament.

Here is a review in The Guardian by Robert McCrum.