The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club

 

By Dorothy L. Sayers

A Lord Peter Wimsey Novel

A man is discovered dead at the gentlemen's club that has Lord Peter as one of its members. As the man, General Fentiman, was quite elderly and known to have a weak heart, it is assumed that he died of natural causes.

But Lord Peter has his doubts. Something about the corpse seems off. 

One of the puzzles surrounding Fentiman's death is exactly when he died. Fentiman had a wealthy sister whose will stated that he would inherit her fortune if she died before him. Amazingly, the sister, Lady Dormer, died at approximately the same time as her brother. The time of her death is known. But the time of the Fentiman's passing can only be estimated. 

Lord Peter takes on the chore to pinning down Fentiman's movements the day before he died and the day he died. Talking to everyone at the club who might have seen him the day before or the next day, patrons and employees, all he can discover is that no one saw Fentiman arrive at the club the morning of his death. So the body is exhumed and an autopsy done which might help establish the death time. What is does reveal is poison, in the form of a drug that can cause a person's heart to stop beating. Clearly it is not a case of natural causes but is a murder. And clearly it is all about the money. One of  Lady Dormer's heirs is a greedy killer. Lord Peter is on the case.

This was a pretty good read. At one point in the story, Lord Peter gets punched in the face, which he probably deserved. Also, the author includes a domestic spat that reads so true to life, it's amazing. 

This book dates from 1928. It is now old enough now that it is in the public domain (in the USA). It is free to read online at Project Gutenberg.

What's a Girl Gotta Do?

 

By Sparkle Hayter

Book One in the Robin Hudson series

Robin Hudson works in the news department of a large New York network. So far, her career and life have been less than stellar. Her work life due to a couple of embarrassing incidents on camera and her personal life due to her soon-to-be ex-husband's infidelity. 

New Year's Eve and Robin gets a phone call from an unknown person who reveals that he knows a lot of intimate details about her life, including Red Knobby. He instructs her to meet him at the networks New Year's Eve party that night if she wants to know more. 

She was thinking she wouldn't go before she got the phone call because she was concerned her cheating spouse would be there with his new lover, who also works of the same network. But curiosity about this mysterious call makes her change her mind.

Once there, she has to witness the painful scene of watching the hubby and his jezebel canoodling on the dance floor. Plus the false and the sincere sympathy she has to endure from coworkers at the party. Finally, she is passed a note instructing her to go to a room in the hotel at exactly 11 PM. Meanwhile, the reader gets to meet the cast of hundreds that fill the novel. So many characters and so many introductions. 

Anyway, Robin does as instructed and knocks on the door and no one answers. She waits a decent amount of time, but no one shows up and no one ever answers. She only encounters one other person, one of her coworkers in the hallway where the room is located.

Naturally, the guy she was supposed to meet is dead in the hotel room and naturally Robin is the prime suspect. We know she didn't do it and it doesn't take much talking on her part to convince the police that she is an unlikely suspect. So being a reporter and having her freedom on the line, she does a little investigating of her own. It doesn't take her long to discover that she was not the only target of the dead man, Jerry Spurdle, a P.I. with a nasty reputation. A few other women at the network have also been blackmailed by him and certainly had reason to want him dead. Did they have the time and the opportunity though, while attending a New Year's party, to beat his head in until he was very much dead?

This was an OK read. Too many characters to keep track of though. I also didn't find the plot that engaging. Or the main characters that interesting. 

Here are reviews by Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly.

Family Reunion

 

By Caroline B. Cooney

Shelley is a young teen who is on summer vacation with her father, her younger brother Angus and her step-mother Annette. Her mom has moved to France, a move that Shelley has been having a hard time accepting. She feels that her mother abandoned her children to be with her lover in France, across the ocean from her children in the US.

Shelley's family spends their summers at a vacation home in rural Vermont. Her father, Charlie, commutes between there and the city. Annette, who has only been married to Charlie for a couple years, has charge of Shelley and Angus. A third child, the oldest, is spending the summer in France with the mother. 

Charlie's sister, Maggie, has invited their family and friends to a family reunion to be held at Maggie's home in the Midwestern US. Maggie is known for her perfectionism, which has earned her family the nickname of the Perfects, a play on their last name, Preffyn. She and her spouse have two kids, Brett and Carolyn. Brett in sixteen and Carolyn is the same age as Shelley, fourteen.

Shelley rather envies the Preffyns organized lifestyles. Maggie always seems to have everything organized and in control, including her kids. Whereas Shelley's family seems to be rather lost and disconnected, with the three kids giving their step-mother a bit of a hard time. Nonetheless, Shelley is looking forward to spending time with her aunt and uncle and their kids, along with her dad and Annette and Angus.

Of course, things are not quite as nice as expected when they arrive for the family reunion. Brett had an unfortunate incident while driving his vehicle and got into a big fight with his mom and has left home as a result. And it turns out the family reunion was actually supposed to be a surprise party for brother Charlie, with lots of guests from Charlie's school days. But Charlie wasn't able to come, he has to attend a mandatory work event instead. All Maggie's party plans fall apart, with no guest of honor attending.

Shelley has always been a bit intimidated by her cousin Carolyn. But the two girls have a lot of fun together and Shelley finds that Carolyn is just a teen girl like herself. As the days go by, she also realizes the Preffyns are not Perfect, but an ordinary family like her own. 

This was an OK read if rather boring. I'm not sure how I came to own it, but after finishing it, I looked it up and discovered it was intended for kids, 10 to 15, or there about. So, not surprising I found it rather dull. Also no surprise that all the family problems are resolved by the end of the story. 

However, it started out much more interesting than it ended, thanks to the little brother, Angus who is quite the mad lad. Unfortunately, most of his hijinks tapered off a bit once they were visiting the relatives in the Midwest. 

Here is a review by Publishers Weekly.

Vita Nostra

 

By Marina & Sergey Dyachenko

Book One of the Vita Nostra trilogy

Sasha was a promising young high school student when she noticed a strange man is watching her whenever she is outside. Eventually the man approached her and gave her a task to perform. Every morning she had to get up early and go to the beach, strip off her clothes and go for a nude swim. If she didn't do as he said, there would be bad consequences to her family: "You will, Sasha. You will. Because the world around you is very fragile. Every day people fall down, break their bones, die under the wheels of a car, drown..." 

Sasha only has one person that she loves in her life, her mom. Sasha's dad is not a part of her life and she has no siblings. It's just Sasha and her mom. So she does what the strange man orders her to do. Of course, it doesn't end with the nude swimming. As graduation approaches, he forces her into attending a small college in a distant town, the Institute of Special Technologies.

Once she gets settled into the college, she comes to understand that all the students attending are there under the same threats she is. She gets to know one male student who stood up against the strange man. This kid, Kostya, reveals that the man is his father. Kostya did not want to attend this college either and as a consequence, his beloved grandmother died. And his father made it clear it was because Kostya was defying him. The two kids vow to kill the man, Kostya's father, if they ever are able to do so.

The texts and the rules of when and how to study them are different and strange and perplexing. But Sasha begins to absorb them and her perceptions of reality become affected. She is such a good student that she gets into trouble for reading ahead and experiencing frightening consequences. On one hand, her instructors applaud her achievements but then get angry when she gets too far ahead. She is constantly getting into trouble for that.

But outside of the studies and the feeling of oppression that envelopes the students, life there is typical of any college. Kids form cliques, kids pair up, kids test the boundaries, drink too much, smoke too much, hook up too much. Sasha is no different from the kids when it comes to college kid behavior. She gets involved with Kostya but then dumps him and finds a new boyfriend. But she and Kostya never lose their connection of their hatred of his father. 

As the college years pass and Sasha becomes an adult, she begins to understand just what the teachers are and what she is becoming. This is where the story gets even more strange. I would like to explain it but it sounds so ridiculous. All I can say is everything is words. Sasha is a word, Kostya is a word, all humans are words or parts of words. And that Kostya's father, the man who forced her into this situation, is not human. He is a text file? A program? A book disguised as a person?  It was all rather murky to me.

The book was really interesting even though the transformations the students are enduring are hard to comprehend. It's kind of a combination of Harry Potter and The Matrix. The students' understanding of the true nature of reality gives them powers, including the ability to manipulate time itself. But they don't perform spells (at least not in this book), their abilities arise from the perception of the true nature of things. Quite a start to a new series! 

The next book in the series is Assassin of Reality. 

Here is a review by Kirkus.