The Sinister Pig

 

By Tony Hillerman

A Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee Mystery

Carl Mankin was hired to investigate the disappearance of massive amounts of fossil fuels from the San Juan Basin area of New Mexico, a rich natural gas production area, among other fossil fuels. 

But as Mankin is just starting his investigation in New Mexico, he is mistaken for DEA, Drug Enforcement, and is shot dead. And when the FBI take over the investigation from the local police, they declare Mankin was accidentally shot by a careless hunter, case closed. 

Meanwhile, the drug lords have figured out a way to get drugs out of Mexico and into the US by using old pipelines that crossed the border. Pipelines are periodically cleaned by a device called a pig which travels through the pipeline removing rust and buildup. So the smugglers are using the pipeline pigs to haul drugs through the pipeline from Mexico and into New Mexico.

Bernie Manuelito, who used to be an officer with the Navajo Police, is now working for Border Patrol, when she spots some unusual activity on a ranch near New Mexico's border. Unfortunately, her harmless nosing around gets her put on a hit list. And in the cross hairs of a Washington DC sociopath who has brought his high-powered rifle to New Mexico to take her out. What the DC insider doesn't know is that his number one guy isn't the loyal tool he believes him to be. 

I found this mystery to be a bit disappointing. In that the first murder is never solved, other than the FBI coverup claiming it was an accidental shooting, nor is the mystery of the billions of dollars of missing funds. Yes, the bad guy DC insider is taken care of. But the take down of the corrupt Border Patrol agent is barely mentioned.  Seems to me the story was mainly used to get Jim Chee and Bernie back together. 

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

Charity Girl

 

By Georgette Heyer

A Regency Romance

Viscount Ashley Desford is attending a dinner party when he accidentally meets young Cherry Steane. She wasn't allowed to attend the party because she lives with her aunt as an unpaid employee. Abandoned by her father, she was reluctantly taken in by her aunt, who treats rather unkindly. Desford finds Cherry interesting and spends a few moments talking to her in the hallway as she peers down into the room from the upstairs, hoping to get a glimpse of the festivities. 

Unfortunately, one of her cousins sees her chatting with Desford and tells the aunt who gives Cherry a severe scolding. Feeling she can't bear living in such a cold and unloving household, Cherry packs her few belongings and runs away, where Desford, who is traveling back to London, comes across her trudging alongside the road the next morning. 

When he finds out she has run away, he tries to talk her into returning to her aunt's home. But she flatly refuses and seems to be desperate to get away. So he offers to escort her to her grandfather's house in London. But when they get there, the house is closed up and none of the neighbors knows where the grandfather has gone. 

Not knowing what else to do with the girl, Desford takes her to a close woman friend, Hetta Silverdale. Hetta and Desford have been friends since childhood, and he views her as a sister and is depending on her to help him now. It takes a bit of persuading, but he gets Hetta to agree to let Cherry stay with her while he tries to locate the grandfather. 

Hetta does not live alone, she lives in the family home with her widowed mother and her younger brother, Charlie. At first, Cherry gets along with Hetta, the mother and Charlie very well. But then Charlie steals a kiss and the mother turns against Cherry and gives her a lecture on encouraging men to come on to her which Cherry certainly did not do.

Meanwhile, Desford is traveling around England, trying to track the grandfather down without any luck. He eventually finds him but discovers the grandfather has recently gotten married again and the new wife, the ex-housekeeper, makes it very clear that she is willing to take Cherry in as an unpaid employee, which is exactly the situation that caused Cherry to run away from her aunt.  And the grandfather refuses to give Cherry any financial support to help her out. 

Desford returns to Hetta only to find everyone upset because Charlie and Cherry are both missing. And Cherry's father, who everyone assumed was dead, has suddenly shown up at the Silverdale home, demanding his child and declaring Desford seduced her and ruined her. 

But things are not as bad as they seem because Desford's younger brother, Simon, has become involved and with his help, everything turns out as well as can be expected.  He tells Desford, at the end of the story, "But if you should get into any more scrapes, Des, just send me word, and I'll post straight back to rescue you!" 

For a romance novel, there is really no romance in this story. Mainly it is about Desford's efforts to help out Cherry.

Sometimes even a favorite author can be disappointing. 

Here is a review by Austenprose.

Never Cry "Arp!" and Other Great Adventures

 

By Patrick F. McManus

A collection of humorous stories about childhood, camping, friendship and hunting and fishing. The title story, Never Cry "Arp!" concerns two grade school boy, the author and his dear friend, Crazy Eddie Muldoon, who, "at the age of eight, was a sort of magnet to injuries. It was almost as though Eddie scheduled his injuries for the day when he got up in the morning.

8:00 Stub big toe of left foot.

8:35 Step on rusty nail with right foot.

9:05 Get stung over left eye by bee.

10:30 Run sliver in hand while whittling.

10:35 Cut finger while whittling.

11:00 Twist ankle jumping off pigpen fence.

11:22 Get tick embedded behind left ear.

12:00 Lunch.

1:15 Get stung by nettles.

2:00 Get bitten by the Petersons' dog."

 But the last incident recounted in the story that resulted in Eddie getting injured was when he and Pat were biking down a steep hill and Eddie's pant leg got caught in his bike's chain. He got so banged up that when Pat asked him if he was OK, all Eddie could say was, 'Arp arp arp.'

The other stories in the collection are

• Skunk Dog
• The Mountain
• Reading Sign
• Kid Brothers and Their Practical Application
• Real Ponies Don't Go Oink!
• Secret Places
• A Really Nice Blizzard
• Cubs
• Muldoon in Love
• Not Long for This Whirl
• The Night the Bear Ate Goombaw

The stories in this collection are some of Pat's best, and all deal with his younger days, which are my personal favorite. Someone should publish a collection of all his tall tales from his childhood and teen years. They are always hilarious!

One Corpse Too Many

 

By Ellis Peters

A Brother Cadfael story.

King Stephen has come to Shrewsbury and is occupying the area with his troops. The local lords tried to resist but failed and they and their men are summarily executed. In all, 94 people are hung until dead, their bodies dumped in a ditch. 

Brother Cadfael has permission to collect the bodies and arrange for them to be returned to their families and given proper burials. But when he does a head count, he finds 95 dead men, instead of the expected 94. And no one recognizes or knows who the 95th man is.

Meanwhile, Cadfael has taken on a temporary helper, a teenage boy who Cadfael quickly realizes is actually a girl. The girl, Godith, is hiding in the abbey area because her father was one of the rebel lords. If she is taken by Stephen and his allies, she can be held for ransom. When she views the body of the unknown man, she recognizes him as part of the rebel alliance who was entrusted to remove treasure from Shrewsbury and convey it to Queen Maud, Stephen's rival for the British throne. 

The killer was after the treasure and used the mass hanging event as an opportunity of commit the crime and hide his victim among the dead. But Cadfael, examining the body, clearly sees he died from being garroted, not from hanging. 

Together Cadfael and Godith put together the pieces of how, where and why he was killed. With the help of Cadfael and Godith, a killer will be revealed.

This was a good read. With a bit of a surprise ending, when Cadfael accidentally discovers that the murdered man was not quite the innocent Cadfael believed him to be. 

Here is a review by Kirkus.

Retief: Emissary to the Stars

 

By Keith Laumer

A collection of eight Retief stories dating from the 1960s and 1970s.

• THE HOOB MELON CRISIS:  As per usual, Terrans and Groaci are in disagreement about who owns a newly discovered world, Froom 93 aka New Groac. And, as per usual, Jame Retief steps in to send the Groaci packing, by introducing an invasive species, gribble-worms. The gribbles take over the world, but they shed their skins, which are quite lovely and can be made into gorgeous cloth. Still it backfires, when the Terrans decide they no longer want Froom 93 either, what with all the gribbles. So the Groaci can have it if they want. Unfortunately, the Groaci mistakenly release the gribbles on their home planet and the worms go after their major crop, Hoob melons.
• THE GARBAGE INVASION: Once again, Terran and Groaci can't agree what to do with the latest new world. Delicia is a natural paradise, green and lush, and Terrans want it to be declared a galactic park. The Groaci are pushing to have it turned into a planet-wide garbage dump and have already started dumping trash on it. To complicate things, a third group has arrived on Delicia, the Basurans. A bellicose race of beings known mainly for eating their planet away to bedrock, they want to add the planet of Delicia to their diet. 
• Excerpt from RETIEF AND THE WARLORDS: Retief and a companion, Harrumph, have been jailed and are shortly to be fed to vicious predators in an arena, to the delight of the locals of Harrumph's home world. But Retief gets his hand on a potent drug, that when taken, gives him an interesting super power.
• THE TROUBLESHOOTER: Basurans, led by one Intimidator of Insolent Upstarts Honk, are causing trouble again, this time on Furtheron, a bucolic planet settled by farmers. Stupidly, though, Honk agrees to a bet with Retief. 
• THE NEGOTIATORS: The diplomats find themselves stuck on a small barren island, the only solid ground on a water world, trying to negotiate a treaty with the natives. But they have no idea where the locals are or even what they look like. Until Retief happens to strike up a conversation with a large blob lounging on the beach. 
• GIANT KILLER: The diplomats mistakenly agree to kill a large carnivorous dinosaur that is dining on the local villagers. Failing to do so will be fatal.
• THE FOREST IN THE SKY: Zoon is has been taken over by voracious bunnies that will eat anything and the local people need help. But what the diplomatic missions didn't understand was that the bunnies are the people's children, mindless eating-machines that their parents are terrified of.
• TRICK OR TREATY: Retief and a small band of circus performers thwart an attempted takeover on the part of an unsavory group of centaurs.

Most of the stories in this collection are just average. In all the stories, most everybody is only looking our for number one, including the humans. And most have neither the brains or gumption to save themselves from disaster. Indeed, most seem indifferent to immanent doom. Only Retief seems to have any morals or seems to be the only one to care about his fellow intelligent beings. 

For me, the only stories that I truly enjoyed was  THE HOOB MELON CRISIS and the excerpt, RETIEF AND THE WARLORDS. 

Never Sniff a Gift Fish

 

By Patrick F. McManus

McManus was a humor writer for outdoor life, hunting and fishing magazines. His stories featured improbable predicaments and childhood tales and strange characters, including himself. Often hilarious and always amusing, reading his stories is trip, in more ways than one. 

The title story, Never Sniff a Gift Fish, features Pat's neighbor, Al Finley. While on a fishing trip with Pat and Pat's long time friend, Retch Sweeney, Finley tries to think up short epithets that feature sporting themes, among which is, of course, "Never sniff a gift fish." A few more are, "What the tourist terms a plague of insects, the fisherman calls a fine hatch."  "I have never met a fish I didn't like." "Even a fish stick once knew the glories of the deep."

List of the stories included:

• Blowing Smoke
• Poof—No Eyebrows!
• I Fish; Therefore, I Am
• Running on Empty
• The Cat and the Cat Burglar
• Salami on Rye and Hold the Wild Gobo
• Two-Man-Tent Fever
• Fish Poles, and Other Useful Terminology
• The Man Who Notices Things
• The Elk Trappers
• The Short Happy Life of Francis Cucumber
• The Arkansas Prank Hound
• Well, Excuuuuse Me!
• The Mountain Car
• The Christmas Hatchet
• The Night Grandma Shot Shorty
• The Kindest Cut of All
• The Bush Pilots
• Share and Share Alike
• Never Sniff a Gift Fish
• Backseats I Have Known
• Edgy Rider
• Strange Scenes and Eerie Events
• The Hunters' Workout Guide
• Temporary Measures
• The Fibricators
• The Family Camper's Dictionary
• The Big Match 

The Grasshopper Trap

 

By Patrick F. McManus

McManus was a humor writer for outdoor life, hunting and fishing magazines. His stories featured improbable predicaments and childhood tales and strange characters, including himself. Often hilarious and always amusing, reading his stories is trip, in more ways than one. 

The title story, The Grasshopper Trap, features one of his most iconic characters, Rancid Crabtree, grizzled old woodsman and idler. Desiring to acquire more bait for fishing, school age Pat and his friend Crazy Eddie Muldoon are on a fruitless hunt to catch grasshoppers. Eddie, who has an inventive mind, dreams up the grasshopper trap and Rancid, who also wants to do some trout fishing, thinks the idea just might work. And it might have, if Rancid had known his left hand from his right. 

List of the stories in The Grasshopper Trap:

• The Skunk Ladder
• How to Go Splat! 
• The Human Fuel Pump
• 'Twas a Dark and Dreary Night
• Trailer Trials
• The Grasshopper Trap
• Get Lost!
• Never Cry Snake!
• Metamorphosis and Other Outdoor Phenomena Wives Don't Understand
• The Swamp
• A Hunker Is Not a Squat
• Why Wives on Christmas Mourn
• The Hunting Lesson
• First Knife
• Nincompoopery and Other Group Terms
• Bad Company
• The Case of the Missed Deer
• Character Flaws
• Mean Tents
• Crick Ritual
• Hunting Camp Etiquette
• Stone Soup
• Gunrunning
• The Wager
• Letters From Camp
• Sweet Sweet Sixteen
• Down and Way Out in Brazil
• Strange Encounters of the Bird Kind
• The Outing
• I, the Hunted

Regency Buck

 

By Georgette Heyer

A Regency novel

After their father passed away, his nearly grown children, Judith and Peregrine, knew he had named the Fifth Earl of Worth as their guardian. Coming London to introduce themselves to high society, the two were expecting to find Lord Worth to be an elderly man, a contemporary of their father. But Lord Worth was not an elderly man at all. Indeed, he turned out to be the man who had accosted and stolen a kiss from Judith when he happened upon her as she was out taking a stroll unaccompanied. 

So things got off to a rough start in their relationship with their new guardian. And it didn't get any better due to Judith's desire to assert her independence and to her dislike of Worth. 

Judith and Peregrine are lucky to be very wealthy. Plus Judith and Peregrine are both good looking. So becoming a big hit in society is easy for them. And amazingly, young Lord Worth takes his role as their guardian seriously and his guidance and connections make their success assured. 

But wealth can be a magnet for bad people. And Peregrine becomes the target of someone who wants him dead. If he dies without an heir, his share of their inheritance would pass to his sister, Judith. So his death with really only benefit his sister. No one else would get their hands on it. Unless they were married to Judith! 

This is one of Heyer's novels that I just never liked as well as most of her romance novels. Judith is arrogant and Peregrine comes off as stupid. Lord Worth is even more arrogant than Judith is. Peregrine's only function in the story is to be the target for the killer. 

Heyer features some of the famous personages of Regency high society of the early 1800s including the Prince Regent, Beau Brummel, the Duke of Clarence and Lord William Alvanley, among others. She also describes the Brighton Pavilion in detail. I image she spent much time researching the time period and the people and places. 

Here is a review by Susan Holloway Scott on Austenprose.

More Than Gold

 

By Shirley Hailstock

Morgan had a rough start to life. Abandoned as a child, she lived on the streets, surviving as best she could. Fortunately, she was adopted by a kind social worker. Morgan turned out to have a talent for gymnastics and was good enough to make the Olympic team when she was nineteen. 

She is approached by US government agents who talk her into, while at the Olympics in Korea, breaking into a Korean prison and rescuing a prisoner, a man who will probably die in prison if not rescued. She does as asked but in consequence she lives her later life in hiding, fearful of assassins coming to kill her. Twelve years later, the assassins do track her down. Her only chance for survival is CIA agent Jack Temple.  

But Morgan and Jack Temple have history, going back to her time at the Olympics, where Jack was there to keep an eye on her, posing as the team swim coach. Morgan fell hard for him, but except for one exciting kiss, it never went anywhere. Having Jack suddenly back in her life sets off so many emotions, she isn't sure she wants him there, even though she needs his expertise to survive the killers on her trail. 

Well, this was a romance novel disguised as a thriller. Sure there are lots of dangerous and thrilling encounters but the main point is to get two lovers back together again. Which requires lots of sex. Which I skipped reading because sex scenes do not appeal to me. And besides the surfeit of sex, there are just so many hair-raising encounters, it began to be a bit tedious. And I never figured out why the Koreans wanted Morgan dead. Something to do with a wedding ring that she was given while in the Korean prison. Why didn't she just give it back to them?  Or give it to the CIA and let them deal with it? And Morgan: first she is this kick-ass woman who can deal with anything. And then she is a lost little girl who needs her big strong man to save her. Then she's back to being kick-ass woman tough enough to track down kidnapped Jack Temple and rescue him from the Koreans completely unaided. The story just left me confused.

Here is a review by Publishers Weekly.

Awakening

 

By S.J. Bolton

Clara Benning is the local veterinarian. So when a plague of snakes descends upon the small town where she lives, the locals naturally turn to her for help. And help she can, having studied reptiles and snakes in the past. 

I did not know this, but apparently the British Isles do have a venomous snake species, the adder. So people understandably get upset when adders start showing up in their homes, among other less dangerous snakes. 

In the past, a local man of limited intellect was known for his obsession with snakes. But supposedly this man was in a medical facility and not in the area. People begin to suspect that maybe this man has returned to the village and is the one behind the sudden influx of snakes. Why he would be doing it may be tied to a fire at a church decades ago.

At first it is mostly just an annoying if a bit of a frightening nuisance. Then a deadly snake native from Papua New Guinea is found in the bed of a little baby. The whole village is looking to Clare for help not only to deal with the snakes but to track down whoever is sending dangerous snakes into the village.

*SPOILER* I liked this story a lot until the end when the killer turns out to be someone who was thought to be dead and buried for decades. I mean, how is the reader supposed to solve the mystery on their own when the author resurrects a corpse? But up to that point, I enjoyed it.  Clare has personal problems that make her an interesting detective mainly due to a childhood accident that left her with a nasty scar on her face. Which, for the most part, she is failing to deal with in a healthy manner. But she is smart, stubborn, daring and knowledgeable. And quite likeable. 

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

Eye of the Monster

 

By Andre Norton

Ishkur is a planet that has an intelligent native population that, so far, has been welcoming to the humans who have arrived to set up trading posts and other small operations. They humans have been joined by group of Salarikans, cat-like fellow off-worlders anxious to exploit a newly discovered world. 

Rees Naper, a young man on the cusp of adulthood, lives at his uncle's mission. He came to live with the uncle after his father died. But he doesn't get along with his uncle. Once of the main sources of disagreement is Rees' assessment of the native Ishkurians. Rees doesn't trust these reptilians while the uncle refuses to admit they might be dangerous, even after they have received word that the natives are up to something and they are advised to leave the mission and come to safety at the spaceport, where transportation off Ishkur is available if needed.

Giving up on reasoning with his stubborn uncle, Rees heads off to his job and on the way he also comes across the young child of one of the local traders, Gordy. He lets Gordy tag along with him and arrives at his job only to find everyone missing and his boss' pet dog cruelly abused and tortured. He has to put the poor dog down. He realizes that the warnings his uncle decided to ignore have come true and that the native Ishkurians are on the rampage. He needs to get back to the mission but decides to stop at the Salarikan compound to warn them of the danger. But he is too late. He finds a scene of slaughter and only one survivor, a young Salarikan girl. All three of them head to the mission, but once again it is too late. The natives got there first and no human is left alive, including the uncle. 

Now Rees has to get himself and his two young charges to safety and away from a native population seems determined to eradicate every foreigner on their world. 

High adventure as the young hero struggles to respond to the dangers he now faces, a story meant to appeal, I think, to teenage boys. It was a good read, but we are never told what sparked the native rampage. Which was quite annoying. 

Daybreak 2250 A.D.

 

By Andre Norton

Fors was different. His most obvious difference was his silver white hair. But he had other differences that weren't so obvious, like his superior night vision. Too bad for Fors, mutants were not appreciated in his village, the descendants of the survivors of worldwide  nuclear war. 

Keeping human lineage pure was very important to these people, fearing the mutations that result from a poisoned world. So when Fors came of age, instead of stepping into the role of scout and explorer that he expected, he was ignored as if he did not exist. So he left, setting out to explore the world on his own and prove that he was just as worthy as anyone, accompanied by his cat companion, Lura.

His father, who died while out exploring, had a scrap of an old pre-war map that might lead to a ruined city. These urban areas were a source of materials and knowledge to the survivors of the catastrophe. But the cities were dangerous. They were the lairs of the Beast Things, dangerous half-human, half-beast mutants that killed everything that entered their domains. Fors' father may have even fallen victim to the Beast Things. But Fors is determined to follow the map his father left behind.

It is not long before Fors sees other people out in the world but he avoids for his own safety. It is also not long before he has an unfortunate encounter with a wild boar that results in a bad gash to his leg. The injury slows him down for a time, but soon he gets back on the trail, riding on a horse that has escaped from the Plainsmen, a nomadic tribe of cattle herders. 

His father's map does leads him to the city. It is full of fascinating treasures. And something else: the Beast Things. It is too dangerous to stay there. But before he can leave he finds one of the men he noticed on his travels laying in a deadfall trap, gravely injured. He helps the man out of the trap and in the process finds a true friend. Together, the two young men will explore the world, facing dangerous creatures and hostile humans and learning that maybe the old ways are not always the best ways. 

This was quite an action adventure, as Fors and his cat companion Lura and his new friend and fellow explorer Arskane go from catastrophe to catastrophe, from scrape to scrape, from battle to battle. For me, it was exhausting as these two guys struggle to survive all the dangers they encounter. I think maybe the book was really intended for a younger and male audience, not a tired old woman like me. It's not a bad read. Just not for me. 

Dork Covenant : The Collected Dork Tower, Volume 1

 

By John Kovalic

From Wikipedia: "Dork Tower is an online comic created, written and drawn by John Kovalic. It chronicles the lives of a group of geeks living in the fictional town of Mud Bay, Wisconsin. Mud Bay's design is strongly influenced by the author's home town of Madison, Wisconsin."

Here are a couple of comics from this really funny collection:

Sanctuary Sparrow

 

By Ellis Peters

Its 1140 CE in Britain. Liliwin is an itinerant entertainer. He juggles, dances, plays a rebec and sings, and is an acrobat. He was hired to entertain at a wedding reception but during his performance the guests got rowdy and jostled Liliwin, and a vase is broken. 

The matriarch of the family is a tightfisted old harridan and she refuses to pay Liliwin his full fee, deducting the cost of vase from his pay. This upsets Liliwin and words are exchanged and he leaves. But he comes back later, to speak to the father of the groom, asking to be paid, and is successful.  Liliwin leaves and goes to sleep in the fields since he cannot afford to pay for a room, being a very poor young man.

But the father is attacked soon after Liliwin was there. He gets bashed in the head and robbed, but doesn't see his attacker. The wedding party is still going on and the guests jump to the conclusion that Liliwin was the attacker and set forth in an angry mob to hunt him down. Liliwin hears them coming but manages to escape to the Abbey, where he claims sanctuary. The mob is forced to back off when the Abbot honors Liliwin's claim and give him sanctuary. Claiming sanctuary was an old custom where a person can reside within the safety of a church for about a month. So Liliwin can remain safely within the bounds of the church for forty days while the sheriff's men investigate the attack on Walter Aurifaber, the father of the groom. Of course, the one of the investigators is Brother Cadfael, member of the Abbey and well-known for his investigative skills and herbal concoctions.

Clearly Liliwin is innocent of the attack and the theft of Aurifaber's treasure. It doesn't take long to turn up another likely suspect, the man's own son, Daniel. Even though Daniel is the newlywed, he has lover, a beautiful and greedy young woman who is the wife of a much older man, an older man who often has to travel out of town on business. In order to keep her happy, both men ply her with gifts, the spouse, of course, not aware of Daniel's connection to his wife. The spouse can afford the gifts and trinkets she requires. But Daniel cannot. His tightfisted grandmother keeps control of the family finances and that means Daniel is chronically short of funds. Did his desperation to placate his lover drive him to attack and rob his own father? 

But then someone else turns up dead: a local busybody who was known to stick his pointy nose in other people's business. Was he killed because he knew too much? Or did he try to blackmail the wrong person? Brother Cadfael will root out the murderer and all the secrets too. 

This was an enjoyable read, with an interesting mystery that Cadfael figures out with his usual wit and compassion and his vast knowledge of plants and herbs. 

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

Seeker

 

By Jack McDevitt

About 9000 years in the future, humans have spread throughout the galaxy. But back in the early days of spaceflight, a group of wealthy people put together an expedition to a new world, the location of which they kept secret, because they were disaffected with the state of society on Earth at the time. They left Earth and were never heard again.

So much time has passed that these early pioneers are dismissed as ancient myth. Their story has become a fantasy and no one really believes it was an actual event. 

Alex Benedict and Chase Kolpath are famous treasure hunters, an occupation that has made them very wealthy. One day a woman brings a cup to them, a gift from her ex-boyfriend, that she believes may be valuable. And it is because it is over 9000 years old and may have been part of the table service of one of the spaceships that took the lost colonists to their secret world. 

Alex and Chase are now on the hunt for that ship and the lost world, not just for the riches it will bring them, but just to figure out what really happened to all those people and why they were never heard from again. But with a treasure this important and valuable, a soon as word leaks, others are going to want a piece of this fantastic pie. 

This was a pretty good story, if a bit too long. I thought his solution as to why the colonists vanished was really interesting and clever. 

Here is a review by Publishers Weekly.

Adulthood Is A Myth

 

By Sarah Andersen

Sarah Andersen is a young artist who started posting comic strips online. She now has several collections of her comics available for purchase. Adulthood Is A Myth was her first book, published in 2016.

I came across her comics on Bored Panda. I didn't find out she had a book out until recently but since I enjoyed her comics on Bored Panda, I gladly bought a copy. And I really enjoyed it. 

Here are a couple comics from the book:

Chess With a Dragon

 

By David Gerrold

The galaxy is full of intelligent, space faring species. And now humans are one of those species. Being mammals, humans are looked down on by most of the other beings as insectoids and reptilians make up the majority of the intelligent creatures of the galaxy. 

New to the game, the humans start using the InterChange, which is a vast library filled with the combined knowledge of thousands of civilizations, downloading as much as they can, as quickly as they can. But they are brought up short when it is made clear to them that all that information is not free. In fact, humans have run up such a huge debt that it will be impossible to pay. For now the only way the debt can be paid is give all humankind into indentured servitude. Which, it turns out, is SOP among the civilizations of the galaxy. All the newbies are given access to the InterChange but are not informed, until it is too late, that it is not a free service. It is a pyramid of slavery, with the youngest races at the bottom and the oldest races at the top. 

But mammals haven't managed to survive in a galaxy filled with insectoids and reptilians without learning a few things. The humans turn to the Rh/attes, another mammalian species, for help because the Rh/attes work for the guys at the top, the Dragons. The Rh/attes have been part of this galaxy-wide game for a very long time. So with a few hints from the Rh/attes and their own ingenuity, the humans hope to beat the galaxy at its own game. 

This was quite the fun and crazy read. Less than 170 pages long, it was also a fast and easy read, although I was a bit lost in the first few chapters. Really enjoyable though. 

Here is a review by Publishers Weekly.

Iron Cage

 

By Andre Norton

Jony's mother and father were captured by the Zhalan and carried off their home planet and into space, caged like livestock and powerless to resist the might of the giant captors. The father, Bron, was killed by the Zhalan and Jony's mom, Rutee, was left alone in her cage, where she gave birth to their son, Jony. The Zhalan used mind control to force their captives to do as they wanted them to. But both Rutee and Jony are able to resist the mind control and manage to escape the Zhalan slave ship when it is on a planet, gathering specimens to add to their cages. 

Rutee is heavily pregnant and begins to go into labor once she and Jony are free from the slave ship. The two humans are found by a local person who helps Rutee and cares for the two infants that soon arrive. The local is a large bearlike being who is the member of a small clan who take Rutee and Jony into their homes. 

Many years later, Rutee has since passed on and Jony, with the help of the clan, is taking care of his younger brother and sister, Geogee and Maba. Rutee has been exploring a the ruins of a city that was possibly settled by humans millennia ago. It is full of strange and dangerous tech. When the bear people find out he was in the ruins, they exile him from the clan, much to his distress. But when a space ship lands nearby and his siblings are taken into the ship, along with two of the bear people, it is up to Rutee to rescue them. This space ship is not one of the Zhalan slave ships and its crew is humans just like Rutee and they welcome him and the his two siblings. But Rutee is outraged when he finds his two bear friends, shackled and caged like animals and he turns against his human rescuers. 

This was quite an interesting story. Rutee makes a lot of mistakes, especially in his handling of his young brother and sister. But he tries to make amends for his errors and protect not only his siblings but the bear people to whom he owes everything.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

Lord of Thunder

By Andre Norton

The sequel to The Beast Master. 

Hosteen Storm, former Beast Master for the military during the war against the Xik, has started to settle into his new holding on the planet, Arzor, when he is approached by two men wanting to hire him. They need to go into territory held by the indigenous natives, the Norbies. The Norbies are  not human and their technology is at a stone age level. Basically they are analogous to the native American tribes at the time of the European expansion to the Americas. The problem is two-fold, though. First, it is the hottest, driest time of the year, when it is dangerous to travel through the back country. Second, the area they want to enter is forbidden to non-Norbies and will create bad relations between the Norbies and non-Norbies, maybe even leading to war. 

Storm at first refuses to lead the two, explaining that it is just too dangerous. However, the one man is looking for his son, whose space ship has crashed in the forbidden zone and the man will not let anyone stop him from trying to rescue his son. And the other man, who works for the government, wants to gather intelligence on the activities of the Norbies in the forbidden zone, to see if the Norbie tribes are planning to start a war with the non-Norbie colonists.  

Storm agrees to serve as guide for the expedition, helped by his Norbie friends. But as they get closer to the forbidden area, Storm loses control of the expedition when the first man leaves on his own after drugging Storm and the others. Storm sets off after the man but he falls into the hands of a hostile cannibal tribe of Norbies. He manages to escape and he discovers that these Norbies are using some dangerous and unknown alien tech. But the true master of this technology turns out not to be one of the natives. The one the Norbies call the Lord of Thunder, who can call down lightning and fire from the heavens turns out to be a human man who has mastered the technology of the old ones, those mysterious beings whose purpose and origin are hidden in depths of time.

This was an OK read. To me, the Norbies are just too derivative of First Nations peoples of the Americas. It felt like the author couldn't be bothered to create a really different alien species with a stone age technology and so just basically made Native Americans with a couple of biological differences. Similar tribal structure, similar hunter/gatherer lifestyle, even similar religious beliefs and the use of drums in ceremonies, it was all just too familiar. 

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

Whispers

 

By Lisa Jackson

Three sisters, born into wealth and privilege, come together one terrible night and concoct a story to cover up what really happened to the man one of them was engaged to marry, pleading ignorance of the events that led to his death.

All three sisters were emotionally scarred by the events of that night, so much so that the trauma still lingered many years later. Summoned home by their autocratic father after years away, they are informed by him that he has hired an investigator to discover the truth of what happened the night Harley Taggert was killed. The father has been contemplating a run for governor and he doesn't want any hidden scandals coming up to taint his run. He has long suspected that his three daughters were somehow connected to Harley's death. 

Confronted with this news brings back all the old memories of that night. Harley's fiancée was the middle daughter, Claire, and she was with Harley on his boat the night he died. She broke up with him that night when she realized that she was attracted to another boy. When Claire left Harley, he was alive and well. How he ended up dead came as a complete surprise to Claire. Her two sisters know more about the happenings of that night than they are willing to say. Claire agrees to go along with the story they have cooked up for her sisters' sakes. Claire was never told what really happened between Miranda and Paige, her sisters, and Harley, her ex-fiancé. Now, though, thanks to their father, all three sisters have to face up to what happened that tragic night. 

This was an OK read. However, if the sisters had just been honest with each other, Harley's killer might have been revealed a lot sooner. It didn't make a lot of sense that Miranda decided that Claire had to remain in the dark about the true events of that night. 

Also, the book is really long, a lot longer than it needed to be. I wish editors would cut a lot of the verbiage out of these novels that are much longer than needed to tell their story. Over 400 pages for what is basically a rather generic mystery story is too much. Do authors get paid by the word? Is that why novels have gotten longer and longer and longer?

Here is a review by Publishers Weekly.

The Smoke Ring

 

By Larry Niven

Sequel to The Integral Trees

First, a note about the "world" of the Smoke Ring. This is from Wikipedia, since it explains it much better than I could ever hope to. 

"The story occurs around the fictional neutron star Levoy's Star (abbreviated "Voy"). The gas giant Goldblatt's World (abbreviated "Gold") orbits this star just outside its Roche limit and therefore its gravity is insufficient to keep its atmosphere, which is pulled loose into an independent orbit around Voy and forms a ring that is known as a gas torus. The gas torus is huge—one million kilometers thick—but most of it is too thin to be habitable. The central part of the Gas Torus, where the air is thicker, is known as the Smoke Ring. The Smoke Ring supports a wide variety of life. No "ground" exists in the Smoke Ring; it consists entirely of sky. Furthermore, the Smoke Ring is in orbit and therefore in free fall: there is no "up" or "down"."

The settlers of Citizen Tree are unexpectedly introduced to tree logging when a logger vessel approaches their tree. The logging vessel is on fire and the settlers rush  to help the loggers battle the flames. Four people are rescued but one doesn't make it, too badly hurt in the explosion that caused the fire. 

The newcomers are welcomed and it is assumed they will become part of Citizen Tree's small community. But the settlers didn't know about the logging and the propulsion system used to pilot the logging vessel. Most of which is centered around equipment brought to the Smoke Ring five hundred years ago by their ancestors from Earth. As the newcomers tell of their life of harvesting the integral trees and of bringing the wood to be sold at the market at the Admiralty, the settlers are intrigued. The Admiralty uses technology that came from Earth and it has quite a large population of several thousand humans compared to most of the communities surviving in the Smoke Ring. 

But Citizen Tree has technology too. It has a Silver Suit and a CARM vehicle which stands for Cargo And Repair Module. The Silver Suit is an armored space suit. 

Due to their five hundred plus years inhabiting the Smoke Ring, which is a weightless environment, most human have become much taller and much thinner. So the average person cannot fit into one of the Silver Suits. But occasionally a throwback is born which they call dwarfs. The dwarf humans are of a size to comfortably wear the space suit. 

Sailing above the Smoke Ring is the Discipline, the ship that brought humans to the Smoke Ring. It is being piloted by a computer that goes by the name of Kendy and Kendy is in contact with a few of the people of Citizen's Tree. Kendy wants to help humans survive more successfully and so it encourages a small group of settlers to take the CARM and travel to the Admiralty. They will be accompanied by two of the tree loggers who are familiar with the life and customs of those who run the Admiralty. 

They will have adventures and learn many things and meet many people and as Kendy monitors from above, it comes to realize that they don't really need its help or guidance and are quite capable of figuring things out on their own.

This was a more enjoyable read than the first book, The Integral Trees, simply because it concentrates less on the science and more on the story. It's really an adventure story and a bit lighter in tone than the first book was. It's a strange weird place for humans to be living, the Smoke Ring. And it does strange weird things to human bodies as they gradually adapt to life in a weightless environment. Certainly well worth reading.

Here is a review by Publishers Weekly.

And That's My Final Offer!

 

By G.B. Trudeau

Doonesbury collection of daily newspaper strips from the 1970s.

I didn't enjoy this collection of cartoons as much as I have the others I have read. It's very political and too many of the strips are just talking heads. Like this:

Pretty boring. I actually started skipping the wordy ones.  Anyway, here are couple more strips from the collection:

Strong Poison

 

By Dorothy L. Sayers

Mystery writer Harriet Vane is on trial for murdering her ex-lover with arsenic, a poison she just happens to have been doing research about for a book she is working on. So she is quite knowledgeable about how to poison a person with arsenic. 

Lord Peter Wimsey, famous amateur detective, has been attending her trial and has fallen love with Harriet and has decided she must become his wife. When the jury cannot reach a decision, the trial is postponed until after the Christmas season, to resume in January. Which gives Wimsey time to do his own investigation into the murder with the goal of finding the real killer and freeing the woman he loves from prison. 

The victim was one Philip Boyes, who like Harriet was a writer, though not as successful as she was. Of course, his last movements were closely examined by the police investigators, with special attention paid to last things he ate and drank. His last meal was with a relative of his, Norman Urquhart. All the food and drink consumed at the meal were also consumed by other people, none of whom suffered any ill effects. However, Philip had stopped by Harriet's place to have a talk and had while there he consumed a cup of coffee. Thus the police concluded he must have been poisoned by Harriet. Now Wimsey has taken it upon himself to prove the police have arrested the wrong person.

This was an OK read. I thought it was kind of odd that Wimsey fell so hard for someone he had never actually met, beyond observing her in the courtroom. It just seemed so out of character for him, judging from what I know of him from previous books. Another problem I had was I already knew that people can build up resistance to arsenic by ingesting small amounts of it over a period of time. So it was pretty clear how the killer managed it. 

Another thing is that we really don't get to know Harriet very well or come to an understanding about what Wimsey finds so irresistible about her. It was certainly an abrupt introduction to an important new person in Wimsey's life. 

Best Friends Forever

 

By Jennifer Weiner

Young Addie Downs is lonely. She doesn't know how to make friends. She's kind of an outsider at school. Then a new family moves in across the street and that's how she meets the girl who will become her one and only and her best friend: Valerie Adler. Valerie is tall and thin and her mother doesn't pay much attention to her only child. 

Things are good until high school. Because Addie is overweight and Valerie has changed from being a gawky kid to graceful, attractive young woman. She becomes a cheerleader and forms new friendships and starts going to parties and school events. While Addie is still just an outsider and is becoming lonely again. Then Valerie is sexually assaulted by the star football player and she asks Addie not to tell anyone. But Addie doesn't listen and tells her parents. Which causes a big upset which is made even worse when Valerie denies it ever happened. 

Addie and Valerie go their separate ways. Valerie moves away but Addie stayed home and inherited her parents' house when they died. Addie gets her weight under control and even has a lover but when the high school reunion comes around, she doesn't attend. Too many bad memories and virtually no good memories of her time in high school. What she doesn't know is that Valerie did attend the reunion and she took revenge on the football player who had raped her back then. She left him naked and bleeding in the venue parking lot after she hit him with her car. Now she is at Addie's front door, begging her for help out of the fix she has gotten herself in.

This was an OK read. Addie is remarkably passive, annoyingly so. She lets people abuse her and take advantage and she never fights back. She lets Valerie back into her life and goes along with her whacky plan, which includes robbing a bank and running off together. I really didn't care much for either character.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

Cotillion

 

By Georgette Heyer

Kitty always fancied her guardian's nephew, Jack Westruther. Handsome, athletic, charming, Jack was the epitome of a young girl's idea of a hero in the early 1800s.

Her guardian came up with the stupid idea of forcing one of his nephews into marrying Kitty by promising to leave his fortune to her. But if none of them came forward, she would be left penniless and his money would be left to some charity. Truth be told, he favored Jack as much as Kitty did but declared he wanted to treat all his nephews fairly. 

He has several nephews, including Jack, of course. But only three others could be possible suitors to Kitty other than Jack. There is Hugh, who is a member of the clergy. And Freddy, who is the only nephew who doesn't need their uncle's money as he has plenty of his own. There is Lord Dolpinton, a peer of a large Irish estate, which sounds pretty nice. But Dolphinton is mentally challenged and his estate is heavily encumbered with debt. All four have been invited to their uncle's estate to make their offers for Kitty. But the favorite of both Kitty and her guardian, Jack, refuses to show up, not liking to have his hand forced.

Of course Kitty and the old man are disappointed by Jack's failure to show. But Hugh, Dolphinton and Freddie all make their appearance. However Freddie did not know about the stipulations involving the old man's will and did not arrive intending to ask Kitty to marry him. As for Hugh and Dolphinton, Kitty has no romantic feelings for either man. Despite his lack of attendance, her heart is set on Jack. So she hatches a plot to get Jack's attention. If Jack will not come to Kitty, then Kitty will go to Jack. And she finagles Freddy into fake proposing and then getting her guardian to allow her to go to London with Freddy to be introduced to her "fiancé's" family. 

Kitty gets to go to London with Freddy. Which means pretty new clothes, stylish new hairdo, parties and fun and getting to know and form new friends. Some of these friends are not really the kind of people a young society maiden should be going around with. There's the beautiful Olivia, whose mother is willing to sell her daughter's maidenhood to the highest bidder. And there's Hannah, a plain speaking, working class woman who needs Kitty's help to free Dolphinton from the cruel clutches of his greedy, manipulative mother who has her sights set on acquiring Kitty as wife for her dim son. Kitty suddenly has a lot going on in her life after years spent on her guardian's quiet, rural estate. But the one thing missing is Jack who is keeping his distance, once again because he doesn't like having his hand forced and has easily seen through Kitty and Freddy's fake engagement. 

I guess the thing I liked best about this story is Freddy, who turns out to be a real gentleman with a kind and loving heart. He is always there to help Kitty whenever she needs him and doesn't try to squash her kind impulses and scold her for the mistakes she makes. Kitty wasn't all the that interesting to me and Jack barely makes an appearance in the story. I didn't really care about the Olivia story although I found the Dolphinton and Hannah story rather charming. 

It's an interesting story but I have never found it as entertaining as many of Heyer's other novels.

Here is a review by Alexa Adams on Austenprose.

Monk's Hood

 

By Ellis Peters

Back in the 1100s in Britain, sometimes people would retire to a monastery, giving their property to the church in exchange for food, clothing, housing and care for the rest of their lives. The Benedictine abbey in Shrewsbury has acquired such a resident in the person of Gervase Bonel and his wife, Richildis and two of their servants, Aelfric and Aldith. Gervase was a wealthy man and had agreed to give his estate to the abbey. Richildis has a teenage son from an earlier marriage, Edwin Gurney. She had married Gervase upon the promise that her son would inherit his estate. But after the marriage, Edwin and Gervase did not get along and in anger, Gervase disinherited Edwin. So there's two people who might want to see Gervase dead. Turns out, though, that there are more than those two who had a reason to be angry at Gervase. So it is not so surprising when Gervase ends up dying from poison placed in a dish of fowl meant just for him. 

Enter Cadfael, resident monk amateur detective of the abbey. Because it was one of his medicinal concoctions that was used to murder Gervase. So naturally he has a strong interest in tracking down the killer. Plus Richildis is an old sweetheart of Brother Cadfael's back before he was a monk, thus making him a suspect, although an unlikely one, given Cadfael and Richildis are in their sixties. And haven't seen each other for more than forty years. 

This was a pretty good mystery story. No politics or warring factions involved, which was nice. I figured out who the killer probably was and who the red herrings all were pretty quickly. Cadfael takes the law into his own hands in dealing with the killer, which I felt was not justified. That was disappointing.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

Listening Woman

 

By Tony Hillerman

This was the third Joe Leaphorn  novel, published in about1970.

An old unsolved bank robbery by a militant First Nations group is somehow connected to the deaths of two innocent people: an old man dying of what is probably cancer and young teen girl, neither of whom has any apparent connection to either dissidents or bank robbers. But Navajo policeman Joe Leaphorn's investigation of the two murders at a lonely Navajo hogan leads him to thinking that somehow that old bank robbery is connected to these two people. 

But the murders are not the only crime in Leaphorn's sights. There's the man who tried to run Leaphorn over during a traffic stop. And there's kidnapping of a group of boy scouts who were on a campout. Not to mention that old bank robbery and the disappearance of a helicopter at about the same time. 

An enjoyable mystery despite the  beating that Leaphorn once again takes in his efforts to solve the various crimes. I hope in the later novels the author lets up on abusing Leaphorn and has him solve a crime without being shot, drowned, smothered, burned, falling off a cliff, poisoned, drugged or bitten by animals. 

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

No-No Boy

 

By John Okada

Ichiro was just a kid when he and his family were confined in one of the relocation centers for the Japanese in America during World War II. When he turned eighteen, he was told to enlist in the military. He refused and as a result he spent several years in prison.

Released at twenty-five and back home, Ichiro is finding it very difficult to reintegrate into society. The fact that he refused to serve in the military is an albatross around his neck. Those Japanese men who had served looked down on those who refused, the No-No Boys. But his mother is very proud that her son did not fight in a war against the homeland. Those who did are traitors, she believes. Ichiro soon finds out that his mother and some other Japanese families in the area believe that Japan actually won the war and that those saying otherwise are merely spouting Western propaganda. Ichiro also discovers that his father knows the truth and deals with the strain it has put on the marriage by staying drunk all the time. 

Ichiro wants to find a job but when possible employers find out he was in prison for refusing to fight for America, they won't give him work. Ichiro encounters an old friend from school, Kenji. Kenji fought in the war and lost his leg in it. But Kenji doesn't judge Ichiro for being a no-no boy. He gives him his friendship and accepts him without judgment. Kenji's friendship and Kenji's health struggle helps Ichiro put his own problems in perspective. 

This was quite an interesting story, about the effects of the war and of the relocation on the Japanese population of America. It's not a subject that I have ever paid much attention too, beyond acknowledging that it was unjust and cruel and stupid. 

Dance Hall of the Dead

 

By Tony Hillerman

A young Zuñi boy, Ernesto, is missing and his last known location drenched in blood. His best friend, a Navajo boy, George, has also gone missing, the morning after Ernesto disappeared. 

Normally, the Zuñi police would handle the investigation. But because George is not a Zuñi, Joe Leaphorn, a Navajo policeman, is called in, tasked with one thing: find George Bowlegs.

So Joe starts nosing around, following George's trail which leads him to Zuñi Village where Ernesto disappeared. And to George's home, where Joe finds the boy's father who is too drunk to be of any help. But he finds George's younger brother who is able to enlighten Joe about what George was up to in the days leading up to Ernesto's disappearance. Ernesto is soon found in a shallow grave and now young George is a suspect in his friend's death. Joe continues tracing George's movements and his contacts which included a hippy encampment and also an archaeological dig site. 

The hippies saw George the morning after Ernesto was killed and indicate that George had set out on horseback on a journey but they didn't know where. And Joe's questions at the dig site revealed that the two boys were frequent visitors there until the leader of the dig ran them off, claiming they were contaminating the dig site. 

But none of this leads Joe to a killer or a reason why a young boy was so brutally murdered. There is more to the story and an important part of it may be George's fascination with the Zuñi religion. Joe had seen a man dressed as a Zuñi kachina lurking around and the younger brother had indicated that George had also claimed to have seen and been frightened by a man dressed as a kachina. 

Did Ernesto die because he broke some rule about the Zuñi religion? Was that kachina-disguised person hunting down George for the same reason? Or did the two boys somehow cross the drug smugglers associated with the hippie camp? It soon becomes clear to Joe that someone is hunting young George and if Joe doesn't find the boy first, George will meet his death.

This was a very readable and engrossing story even though the murderer was pretty clear long before the end of the story. And the ending brings up the problem I had with the book: I hated the ending. To go all the way through a story to have it end the way it did was very disappointing. 

A Darker Domain

 

By Val McDermid

A rich man's daughter and her baby son are kidnapped and held for ransom. Contact is made with the kidnappers and an exchange arranged. But it all goes wrong and the daughter is killed and the kidnappers vanish with the baby and are never heard from again.

Twenty years later, and a woman has come to the police for help finding her father who vanished at about the same time as the rich man's kidnapped grandson. The woman is desperate to find her father because her son is dying of cancer and needs a transplant and her father could be the donor, if he can be found.

All her life, she thought her father, Mick, was a miner who left his family behind and moved away to a nearby town, sending back money occasionally. But as the police investigate his disappearance, they discover he never moved to that town and the money was being sent by someone else who felt sorry for her mother.

Meanwhile, the rich man still longs to find his lost grandson and bring him home. . A reporter has stumbled across a compelling new piece of evidence concerning the kidnappers. She brings this evidence to the rich man and he brings it to the police and now the search is on once again to find the lost baby who is a baby no longer and is now a young man. If he is even still alive!

This was an OK mystery story. It was pretty clear that the vanished miner and the kidnapping, which both happened at about the same time and in about the same area, were most likely connected. One thing I found hard to understand was the miner's wife just accepting that he had moved to a nearby town without ever following up on that and seeing for herself that he had left her and his family behind. Supposedly she was ashamed because he a "scab" or, as he is called in the story, a "blackleg" or, if I am understanding it correctly, a "strikebreaker." I must admit that the book made so little impression on me, that when I sat down to write this, I couldn't even remember what it was about until I looked at the description on the back cover. I didn't dislike it, I also didn't love it, it was an OK read.

Here is a review by Publishers Weekly.

Ghost Month

By Ed Lin

Jing-nan and Julia first met in grade school and fell in love and planned out their lives together. They would go to college in the USA and then get married and raise their children and live lives of success and prosperity. At least that was the plan. 

But Jing-nan's father died unexpectedly and a large family debt was passed on to Jing-nan requiring him to return home to Taiwan and run his family's food stand in the night market in Taipei. 

Jing-nan was ashamed of his failure to graduate college and having take over the food shop. So he broke off contact with Julia. Last he heard, she had dropped out of college and had also returned to Taipei. Then he found out Julia had been working in a betel nut shop where the shop girls dressed provocatively to lure in their mostly male customers. And that she had been murdered, shot dead. He is stricken with grief and can't help but wonder how such a lovely, smart girl had ended up like that. 

He begins a sort of half-hearted investigation that reveals the local gangs might have been involved. Gangs are rampant there (apparently) and somehow Julia came to grief because of her knowledge of their activities. Jing-nan is on the right track, as he is beaten up and threatened by local gangsters. But the threats don't stop him and his questions don't only lead to Julia's killers but to understanding his own feelings and failings too.

This was an interesting and sad story. The loss of a bright young woman like Julia was just so tragic. As was Jing-nan's acceptance of the burden of his family's debt, forced into spending his life paying it off. But the best thing about the story was looking at a culture that shares much with ours but is also quite different, with a very long and complicated history. I liked reading about Jing-nan, his friends and coworkers and I enjoyed the story very much. 

Kirkus has a review of the novel here: Kirkus Reviews. 

Murder Must Adverise

 

By Dorothy L. Sayers

Something is fishy at the advertising firm of Pym's. A man has died at the office and it isn't clear that it was an accident. So the boss brings in Lord Peter Wimsey to work undercover as a copywriter.  As an employee of the advertising agency, it will be the first time Lord Peter has ever held a real job and earned a working man's paycheck, an experience that touches him in unexpected ways.

Doesn't take long for Lord Peter to figure out that Mr. Pym, the owner of the agency, was correct in his feeling that things are not right. Getting to know the his various coworkers and seeing their struggle of making ends meet puts Lord Peter deep into a lifestyle opposite to his own of wealth and privilege. And it is that scramble for money that has lead someone at the agency down a very sad and dangerous road.

This is one of my favorite Sayers stories, mainly for the way Lord Peter makes himself adapts to working at the advertising agency. He becomes so involved with his copywriting that walking away from it when the case is solved became a bit difficult for him. I enjoyed the look behind the scenes at the agency and I imagine the thinking that goes into their ad campaigns isn't all that different than advertising thought today, ninety years later.