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.

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. 

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. 

Warlock Holmes : A Study in Brimstone

 

By G.S. Denning

Based on Sherlock Holmes stories, this collection contains six stories, starting with when Dr. Watson first joins Holmes in his adventures. Watson is ex-military who is still recovering from wounds received in combat. And Holmes is a strange, mystical fellow with connections to demons and other arcane beings. Watson is actually the more observant of the two but Holmes is peculiar and unpredictable.

Like the originals, these stories feature people coming to Holmes for help or people encountered who need help. Holmes also has the help of two of Britain's finest, Detective Inspector Torg Grogsson, an ogre and Inspector Vladislav Lestrade, a vampire. Also there is a  version of the Baker Street Regulars except these are the Baker Street Irregulars, a pack of rats led by a shapeshifting ratboy.

The six stories:

• A Study in Brimstone
• The Adventure of the Resident Sacrifice
• The Case of the Cardboard... Case
• The Adventure of the Yellow Bastard
• The Adventure of the _eckled  _and
• Charles Augustus Milverton: Soulbinder

Holmes in these stories in similar to the original in that they are both enigmas. Original Holmes for his intellect and uncanny powers of observation. And this Holmes for his uncanny and secret powers that he uses for his own benefit and to bring each case to a satisfactory conclusion.

I enjoyed the humor encountered in the stories. As far as whether the stories are takes on the original Sherlock Holmes stories, I don't know as I have never really read the Holmes stories. I did recognize one story that's a take on the original, "The Adventure of the Speckled Band". But only that one.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

Backpack

 

By Emily Barr

After her mother died, Tansy,  was feeling the need for a change. Her mother left her a goodly amount of money and so Tansy decides to have an extended vacation to the Far East. The plan, originally, was that her boyfriend, Tom, would come too. But at nearly the last minute, he backed out. That doesn't stop Tansy from going on her trip, even though the thought of traveling alone scares her.

But she follows through and heads off to strange new lands. At first, she sneers at her fellow backpackers but soon enough finds that she is doing the same cliché things they are doing. She makes some friends and finds that the traveling is easier if you are with some people you know a bit. 

She actually meets a man that she at first is not too interested in but that changes over time. Although she still has her sights set on the absent Tom, who she feels is her true love, she embarks on a love affair with the new man, Max. 

The longer she stays in the East, the better she feels about herself. And being with Max is part of the reason for that. Nevertheless, when Tom lets her know he will be coming out there too, she dumps Max and runs to join Tom at the island resort where he will be staying. Before long though, Tansy realizes that Tom is not the love of her life and that she has made a very big mistake.

Added to all this is a serial killer in the area who seems to be targeting women who are very similar in appearance  to Tansy herself, making all the young, blonde, European woman like herself who are traveling in the East very nervous and wary.

I can't say I really liked this story. I've said this before, but it's hard to like a story where you don't like the main character. And I really didn't like Tansy. Not one bit. I found her to be a very unpleasant person. And it turns out she has a horrific secret that, I think, proves she really is bad news.

Also there are several sections in the book where the author lectures the reader on various topics including alcohol, opium, Vietnam war, cocaine and the decay of modern Western society. Her lecture on the decay of Western society is one of the shorter ones:

Decadence, after all, comes from the Latin word for decay. The more time I spend away, the more strongly I feel that Britain, Europe and America are corrupt societies on their way out. They are past their peak, collapsing, with too much money and luxury. They have lost the most basic humanitarian instinct to share. From here, it seems obvious that no society can survive once its members lose that impulse. 

I don't know if this is just intended to be Tansy speaking or if it is the author's opinion too. But I did not appreciate the "I'm better and smarter than you" attitude of these lectures. Even though that may be the case.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

 

The Housemaid

 

By Freida McFadden

The Housemaid, Book 1

Millie hopes her new job is also a new start for her, a young woman who has not had the easiest of lives so far. She has been hired as maid to the wealthy Winchester household which consists of Andrew, Nina and their little girl, Cece. 

Starting a new job is always a bit stressful but it's even worse when your boss is as capricious and unpredictable as Nina Winchester turns out to be. At times Nina is reasonable and understanding only to turn around and make crazy accusations against Millie. Eventually Andrew lets Millie know that Nina has been hospitalized for mental problems in the past. And that at one point she tried to drown baby Cece and kill herself with an overdose. 

As Nina becomes even more erratic and unreasonable, Nina finds comfort in Andrew's understanding and gentle arms. She never intended to fall in love with the handsome and wealthy spouse of her employer. Or he with her. In short order, loony Nina is sent packing and Millie finds herself the cherished object of Andrew's affection. 

Or so she thought. Because nothing is as it seems to be in the Winchester household. And everyone is playing a deep game, including the groundskeeper, the closed-mouthed giant from Italy, Enzo.

Overall, I didn't care for this story and I admit I skipped vast quantities of it. Turns out I don't enjoy reading about people treating other people like garbage for no reason. But I will say I greatly enjoyed the conclusion of the story where nearly every guilty party got their just desserts. 

With A Vengeance

 By Riley Sager

Born into wealth and influence, it all turned to dust when Anna Matheson's father was accused of a heinous and terrible act that resulted in the deaths of many innocent people, including US soldiers on their way to fight in World War II traveling on a train built by Anna's father's company. The train engine was deliberately designed to self-destruct because, according to the accusations, Matheson was a Nazi sympathizer. Supposedly Matheson didn't care that his own son, a soldier, was on that train too.

Matheson never made it to trail to face the accusations because he was stabbed to death in prison. After he was murdered, Anna's mother basically gave up on life and died soon after. Young Anna was alone in the world, stripped of mother, father, brother and of a life of comfort and wealth. She went to stay with her Aunt Retta, who taught Anna that life is pain. But also taught her to stand up to it.

When Aunt Retta died, Anna inherited from her along with a small fortune, a box of documents that proved Matheson was framed by a business rival, Kenneth Wentworth. So Anna comes up with a scheme to bring the guilty parties, of which there are six including Wentworth, to justice. She sends out invitations to a train trip from Pennsylvania to Chicago. Included in each invitation are ominous messages Anna is sure will guarantee the invitees attendance on the train trip. And she is almost correct. Five suspects show up. But the number one guilty party, Kenneth Wentworth, is not there. Instead it's his son, Dante, who intercepted the invitation and took his father's place. Because Dante and Anna used to be a couple but Wentworth put a stop to the relationship and now Dante is hoping for a second chance with Anna.

Anna's plan is confront the suspects with copies of the proof of their guilt and then hand them over to the police when the express train arrives at its only stop in Chicago. Of course, it doesn't quite go the way she intended. First of all, Dante is not his father. Secondly, almost immediately, one of the suspects ends up dead, poisoned, it appears. Third, an uninvited person crashes the party, claiming he got on the wrong train. This person, Reggie Davis, is as welcome as a skunk at a barbecue, and even more unwelcome when he reveals he is actually an FBI agent, placed on board to make sure all the involved parties make it to Chicago alive. And he has already failed at that with the poisoning death of one of them. Before much longer the body count increases again. Anna and Reggie have lost control of the situation and their goal of getting the remaining suspects to Chicago alive is seriously in danger of failure. 

An interesting murder mystery with lots of red herrings and, I think, too many suspects. Also, with Anna being an attractive young woman and with three young single men on board the train, I assumed a romance was going to be part of the story. But, as it turns out, although a couple of advances are made, that never happens. So between the lack of a little romance and the shifting list of suspects, I found the story less than enchanting.

 

Remarkably Bright Creatures

By Shelby Van Pelt

A mystery story without a murder and a detective (of sorts) who isn't a mammal.

The "detective" is an observant old octopus that lives in an aquarium in a town, Sowell Bay, on the West Coast of the USA. We find out, later in the story, that the octopus was a rescue who was injured and given to the aquarium to rehabilitate and ended up staying there.

The octopus, who is called Marcellus, has a close friend at the aquarium, an older lady, Tova, who comes in to clean in the evening after the aquarium is closed. Tova knows a secret about Marcellus. That he knows how to escape his tank and he travels around the aquarium at night, visiting the other tanks and snacking on the other creatures displayed there. Tova discovered him tangled up and stuck one night and she freed his from his bonds. 

Marcellus knows he is quite elderly, octopuses only live three to four years, and his time is running out. But he has developed a bond with Tova and he senses things about her and knows she still grieves the loss of her only son, Erik, who was just eighteen when disappeared one day while out boating. His body was never found and exactly what happened to him not known. 

Tova has an accident at work and has to take a few weeks off to heal. The aquarium hires a man who is new to the area to handle the cleaning until Tova returns to work. Cameron has come to town looking for the man he hopes is his father. Cameron's mom never revealed who his father was and she vanished from Cameron's life when he was just a youngster. Cameron has reason to believe that a man from Sowell Bay may be the man he is looking for. But he has not been able to confront the man, who always seems to be away on business. About to run out of money, Cameron takes the janitor job at the aquarium.

Marcellus quickly discovers some very interesting information about Cameron, information that Tova needs to know. But getting that info to Tova is going to take all his octopussy wiles to accomplish. And when he succeeds, Tova repays him in the kindest way possible.

This was a charming story, especially the interactions between Tova and Marcellus and his ruminations on his life in the aquarium and on the humans who come to peer at him. All the characters in the story are decent, caring people, sometimes a little misguided, but essentially good at heart. Even the man for whom Cameron came to Sowell Bay to find.

 

 

Listen for the Lie

 

By Amy Tintera

So, back when she was twenty-four, Lucy Chase was found one morning, wandering, covered in blood and with a wound to her head. She had no memory of the night before.

Shortly after Lucy was found, her best friend, Savvy was also found, dead, with her head bashed in. At first, it was assumed that the two women were both the victims of assault. But when Savvy's blood was found on Lucy and her skin under Lucy's fingernails, the truth of what happened that night was not clear. The case was never brought to trial because of lack of evidence.

The local townsfolk, for the most part, decided that Lucy had killed her friend and that she was pretending to have amnesia. Savvy's family was among that group. Included were Lucy's own mother and father, although they kept their doubts to themselves. 

The hostility was so toxic for Lucy, that she moved to California. For five years, she never returned home. Until her grandmother talked Lucy into coming home for the grandmother's birthday. At which point, the grandmother told her that a famous podcaster had arrived in town to do a program about the murder in hopes of figuring out who actually killed Savvy. The grandmother even talked Lucy into letting the podcaster interview Lucy. 

In the five years since Savvy's death, Lucy has never been able to remember what happened that night. She agrees to the interview because she wants to know the truth. She hopes that she will finally be able to recover her memory, even if it means she is guilty of the murder of her best friend.

This was an OK read. Actually, I found it a bit boring. I never really got that interested in Lucy and her story. Lucy is supposed to be a hard case, but she doesn't live up to that reputation throughout the story. She comes across as a bit of a wimp, I think. 

Everyone in this little Texas town is getting plenty of action, including Lucy's parents, who have been busy outside of their marriage for years and years. Even Lucy's eighty-something grandmother has several men friends. And apparently, back before the day of the murder, the now-dead best friend was getting plenty of action, as was Lucy herself and her now-ex husband. Overall, the whole town comes off as something out of a daytime soap opera, everybody boinking everybody else and everybody seemingly knowing it. Including Lucy herself, who soon hooks up with the podcaster fellow who is supposed to be interviewing her. This book is like an audition for a melodramatic series on TV or on streaming. 

Guess I'm not the only one who thought this book was meant for video. Apparently it is going to be turned into a series for TV by Universal. Here's a link to an article in the LA Times. I didn't know about this when I wrote above that the book is like an audition for a TV show. 

Three Times Lucky

 

By Sheila Turnage

Moses Lo Beau was a foundling. As a baby, she was found floating on a makeshift raft in a flooded river. She was adopted by the man who rescued her from the flood, Colonel Lo Beau. Together with his partner, Miss Lana, they raised the baby that Colonel named Moses because of the similarity of the baby's rescue to that of the Bible story of Moses. However, this baby was a little girl, which the Colonel claims he didn't know when he named her Moses. Mostly she goes by Mo.

Apparently Mo's birth mother placed her baby on the raft to save her from the flood. It is a mystery that Mo would dearly love to solve as she writes letters to her "Upstream Mother" and places them in  bottles to be launched into waterways and rivers upstream of where she lives hoping someone will find them and that will lead to finding her birth mother. This is her fantasy, anyway.

But Mo has a good life in the tiny village where she lives. Colonel and Miss Lana are fairly strict parents, but loving and kind and well liked by the local community of which they are a vital part since they have the only eatery in the little town of Tupelo Landing, North Carolina. Their little café is the local gathering place and so Mo knows everyone and all their business too.

When one of the local people is found with his head bashed in, naturally Mo makes it her business to figure out what went wrong in the dead man's life. For this she enlists the help of her best friend, Dale, who is eleven years old just like Mo is. Together she and Dale start snooping around and getting into trouble and getting in the way of the police investigation being run by an out-of-town detective, Joe Starr. 

I enjoyed this story quite a bit even though I usually find stories about precocious children annoying. However, Mo is not quite as mouthy and bratty as fictional precocious children are often portrayed, probably thanks to Colonel Lo Beau, who has raised Mo with military precision. So she is more disciplined than the usual fictional wunderkind. 

The murder mystery is not the most interesting part of the story, it's mainly about Mo's antics and how she gets herself and Dale tangled up in the investigation. Dale even becomes a suspect even though he is just a kid and ends up being arrested. However that is just a ruse to lull the actual murderer into revealing him or herself. 

So this was an entertaining read even though its intended audience is kids in the 12 to 20 year old range, I'm guessing. I'm not sure how I ended up with the book as I don't usually bother with kid lit. But I have nothing bad to say about the story, the characters or the plot. I liked it! 

The First Eagle

 

By Tony Hillerman

A policeman, Benny Kinsman, is investigating a tip he received that a man known for poaching is back at it again. So Officer Kinsman heads out into the wilds of northern Arizona to catch the poacher, Robert Jano, in the act of capturing an eagle, a protected species. 

Acting Lieutenant Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police is expecting Kinsman in his office for a meeting and when Kinsman doesn't show up, Chee goes looking for him. He finds the poacher, Jano, standing over Kinsman's body and immediately arrests Jano.

Meanwhile retired policeman Joe Leaphorn has been hired by a woman to find her missing niece, Catherine Pollard. Pollard went missing the same day as Officer Kinsman was attacked. Leaphorn doesn't believe in coincidences and agrees to try to find the missing woman. He seeks out Officer Chee, seeking to speak to Jano to find out if he noticed Pollard when he was in the area or if he had seen the jeep she was driving. Leaphorn finds out that a jeep was seen by a local not too far from the area where Kinsman was killed. And Chee finds out that Jano also saw a jeep while he was out poaching eagles. Using this information, the jeep is located and there is blood on the driver's seat. It begins to look like Kinsman's murder is possibly connected to Pollard's disappearance. And that Jano is not the killer.

This was an OK read. There is some rather technical stuff about scientists investigating diseases carried by animals that can spread to humans, namely bubonic plague and hantavirus. Of course this figures into the plot and it is not a red herring. But the killer's motive came as a complete surprise to me and made sense in a sad way. One can only hope that the killer's conclusion about the fate of humankind doesn't happen.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

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.

Lost & Found

 

By Jacqueline Sheehan

Rocky's husband died of a sudden heart attack and she is having a very hard time coping with her grief. In order to give herself a breathing space, she leaves her home and moves into a rental house on a touristy island off the coast of Maine during the off season. 

Looking to occupy her time, she takes on the part time job of animal control officer. She deals with a lot of stray cats, problem raccoons and pets abandoned by the summer people. One of the animals she deals with is a Labrador retriever who is found seriously ill and crippled by an arrow in his shoulder. 

Rocky fosters the dog, which she names Lloyd. It seems to her, as a person who is dealing with grief, that Lloyd is dealing with grief too. When it turns out that the arrow that was in the dog's shoulder was a rather rare, handmade arrow, Rocky starts trying to track down where it came from, hoping to discover more about Lloyd and what happened to him. 

Meanwhile, Rocky gets to know some of the permanent residents of the island and starts to form some good friendships. If her obsession with tracking down Lloyd's past doesn't get in the way, that is. Oddly, she decides she wants to learn archery, using the same kind of homemade arrows as the one that Lloyd was shot with. This brings her into contact with a man on the mainland who teaches archery part time, Hill, short for Hillary. Is a romance blossoming? Or will poor Hill end up with an arrow in his leg? 

I sympathized with Rocky's grief and her desire to have some time alone to adjust to her new reality. I was happy when she found a friend in poor, wounded Lloyd. I was less interested in the mystery of Lloyd's previous owner. And I was not much interested in the teenager next door who is anorexic. And I was completely uninterested in Rocky's desire to become proficient in archery. Nor was I surprised to read that Rocky's elderly friend on the island didn't have cancer and instead was risking her life by not going to see a doctor about her belly pain. Because everybody in this story is a bit different. So parts of the story I liked but other parts I really didn't.

There is a follow up book, Picture This. 

In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead

 

By James Lee Burke

The mutilated corpse of a young woman is found, stuffed into a metal barrel. Cherry LeBlanc was only nineteen when she was killed and dumped and it is detective Dave Robicheaux's job to solve her murder. And a movie star, in town to make a movie, also discovers the bones of a man while out boating. Dave, viewing the remains of the dead man, realizes he was a witness to the man's murder back in 1957, when Dave was a college boy. 

The movie star, Elrod, sometimes has mystical experiences and he shares with Dave his vision of a Confederate general and a warning the general wanted Elrod to give Dave. Of course, Dave dismisses Elrod's warnings until Elrod tells him something that no one, besides Dave himself, could possibly know. 

Before much longer, the Confederate general starts appearing to Dave too and gives him oblique advice that Dave doesn't know how to process. Dave tries to tell himself it's just his mind working through things but even his young daughter has seen the dead general though she doesn't realize he is not real.

So this Confederate stuff is woven all through the story and becomes part of Dave's struggle to bring justice to the two victims, Cherry LeBlanc and the man who was murdered back in 1957. 

The plots of a Dave Robicheaux novel are always rather tangled and hard (for me at least) to follow. But the ghost general sure added to the tangle, bringing an element of the supernatural that I didn't expect from a detective story. I really enjoyed his appearances, thought they added a lot to the story. 

Here is a review by Kirkus.

The Fallen Man

 

By Tony Hillerman

Shiprock is located in San Juan County, New Mexico. It is, according to Wikipedia, the "erosional remnant of the throat of a volcano."

Shiprock is sacred to the Navajo people and climbing it is dangerous and forbidden. Still people seek to climb it as it is deemed a difficult and challenging climb. In The Fallen Man, a couple of climbers discover the bones of person high up on a ledge, with the remains of climbing equipment scattered around the bones remains.

Retired Navajo policeman Joe Leaphorn remembers the case of man who went missing several years before, Harold Breedlove. Harold was known to be a climber and his car was found abandoned in the area. He had just celebrated his thirtieth birthday and had told his wife that he was going to a meeting and that he would be back shortly. But he vanished.

Now Breedlove's father had set up a strange will that kept Hal from inheriting the family ranch until he reached his thirtieth birthday. So Hal had just come into his inheritance when he went missing. He was declared dead years later and his wife inherited the property.  So when the bones found on Shiprock turn out to be those of the missing Hal, questions arise. Was he killed for his inheritance? Was it an accident? Was he climbing Shiprock alone? Which would be extremely stupid and foolhardy thing to do. Or was someone with him? Did they cause his death? If they didn't, why didn't they report the accident? Clearly, a closer look is required, which suits Leaphorn just fine, as he doesn't like unsolved mysteries even though he no longer officially works for the police department. 

The timing is the key to solving the death of Hal Breedlove. And frankly, I was completely lost when it came to understanding the problem with Hal's death and the date of his inheritance. I also did not approve of Officer Chee's and Leaphorn's solution to Hal's death, taking justice into their own hands, in a way.

Also there is a subplot where Office Chee and new character Office Bernie Manuelito are trying to track down a cattle thief. They finally figure out how it is being done and the person doing it. But instead of including the scene where the two cops confront the bad guy, which I was really looking forward to reading about, instead all we get is, "Officer Manuelito arrested [bad guy] today. He was loading Maryboy heifers into his [transport]." Hillerman missed an opportunity there for some reason. I always wonder if authors sometimes get bored with their story and just wrap thing up rather abruptly because they are tired of it. 

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

The Gabriel Hounds

 

By Mary Stewart

Cousins Charles and Christy have known each other all their lives and have always been good friends. So when they realized they were both going to be in Beruit at the same time, it was only natural to spend some time catching up. While there, they also wanted to visit their Great-Aunt Harriet, who lived in an old Arabic palace with her dogs and a few servants. Harriet was know to be a little loopy and eccentric, not surprising in a person in their eighties. 

What was surprising was how resistant the old woman's servants were to letting Christy in to visit her aunt. Christy was finally able to talk her way into the palace and actually see her aunt, who seemed to be doing pretty well for an old woman in precarious health. However, when she asked permission for Cousin Charles to visit, she was flatly turned down. Informed by the servants that the aunt did not want to see Charles and that she wanted to be left alone.

When Christy told Charles about her time with Harriet, he knew at once that something was off. Together they hatched a plan to sneak Charles into the palace so he could see Aunt Harriet for himself. And maybe figure out what kind of funny business was going on. 

This was a fun read. The author is really good at describing the local scenery but without boring the reader to death. Her descriptions make one wish to see it for oneself, but given the state of things in the Middle East and Hezbollah's little hate affair with Israel, it is doubtful western tourists are welcome there these days.

Here is a review of the novel by Kirkus Reviews.