Dead Soul

By James D. Doss

Charlie Moon, ex-tribal cop turned rancher, has to deal with his aunt's psychic visions. Aunt Daisy is a shaman and she has interesting dreams.
Charlie has also been approached by the tribal chairman who wants him to investigate the death of a member of the tribe, Billy Smoke. Smoke was the limo driver for US Senator Patch Davidson, who owns the big ranch next to Moon's. Billy Smoke was in the limo one night in the parking lot of a bar, waiting for the Senator to come out of the bar. He was attacked and killed and the Senator was also attacked and beaten but not killed as the attack was interrupted by a passerby, the tribal chairman. The police investigation and the FBI both decided it was a robbery gone bad.
Investigating a US Senator is a touchy business. Many important people, including the President have visited Davidson. But Charlie turns up evidence that the attack was not a robbery and that it may not be over, either.

This was a good read which I enjoyed a lot. I did find the plot a little convoluted and a tad unbelievable, but it was still a good story, quite engaging.

The Big One

By Harrison Arnston

Ted Kowalczyk gets a cryptic note from an old friend. Included with the note is a scientific report. Ted, an ex-FBI agent who now works as an insurance investigator, reads the report and its shocking conclusion predicting a huge earthquake soon to hit Los Angeles. So he calls up his old friend at work only to be informed that the friend, Tommy Wilson, has been killed in a car crash three days previously. Ted is upset and puzzled and he decides investigate Tommy's death.
Ted takes the report  to an expert, who confirms that the two dead scientists developed a way to accurately predict earthquakes.
As Ted delves deeper, it become clear that the federal government is behind both scientists' deaths. The government is taking the position that the Los Angeles will be impossible to evacuate and so they are just leaving it to its doom. The only steps being taken are the removal of critical government suppliers and troops. These evacuations are being passed off as a routine emergency preparedness drills.
The federal government also has a secret plan to bury small nuclear bombs along a fault zone in the hopes of releasing the geological stresses and prevent the huge earthquake. This plan could work, but it could also precipitate the major earthquake or set off smaller quakes. What will happen is not known.
But the all the secrets will soon be out. Not only is Ted hot on the trail, but an LA newspaper is also on the verge of discovering the truth. Pretty soon government officials will be in the hot seat, trying to explain why they decided not to at least attempt to evacuate the LA area.

This was a pretty good story. I didn't really buy into the idea that the United States government would be so indifferent to fate of millions of its citizens, though. The excuse is that the logistics would be a nightmare and that forewarning the public would cause panic that would lead to riots and the breakdown of law and order. But other than that, I liked it.

Atlantis Gate

By Greg Donegan

This is the fourth book in a five book series. Ex-Green Beret Eric Dane has dream about the 1960s, featuring the poet Robert Frost and President Kennedy. The dream ends with Washington DC destroyed in nuclear war.
Meanwhile, flash back to Leonidas the Spartan battling the Persians at Thermopylae in 480 BC. Leonidas confronts an other-worldly creature and visits an oracle who sends him off with her daughter to act as an advisor while Xerxes is trying to cross the Hellespont. Xerxes also has a questionable woman advisor who has given him a modern day map of the prospective battleground, a tremendous advantage in a time when maps were very inaccurate. Leonidas' advisor is working to protect the world from the Shadow, a malign force that wants to steal all Earth's resources and leave it barren and forsaken. Xerxes' advisor is working for the Shadow, but only because she was forced to do so.
Back in present day times, events transpire that reveal the Shadow is making its big move and Eric Dane may be one of the few people who can get in its way.

This book has a lot of boring details about technical stuff and history and it really delves into that battle of Thermopylae pretty deeply, much more than I wanted to know. So I found myself skipping a lot of it because I just didn't care. It's an interesting premise and some of it was quite intriguing but too much was a lot of technical or scientific info and ancient history. I won't say it was a bad book, just not my cup of tea, so to speak. I also won't say that reading the previous three books might have helped because if book one had the same kind of detailed descriptions, I would have never continued on to book two.

Sticks and Scones

By Diane Mott Davidson

Goldy is a caterer and she has landed a three part job with the man who owns Hyde Castle. This fellow, who inherited the castle, wants all three meals to feature Elizabethan-era types of food. The castle was brought over from England and reassembled in Colorado. The owner, Eliot Hyde, has been renovating the castle with a view to converting it to a conference center. The three catered events are designed to highlight the castle and its amenities, so it is very important that all goes smoothly.
But a few hours before the first event, Goldy wakes up to a suspicious noise. Just as she is going to get out of bed to investigate, the front window of her house is shot out. The police are called and an investigation begins.
Goldy's husband, who is a cop, is out of town. He returns the next day and joins Goldy at the castle chapel just in time to get shot by an unknown assailant minutes after Goldy finds the body of a young man in the creek near the chapel. Tom, the husband, is helicoptered to the hospital with a serious but not fatal wound. Eliot lets Goldy, Tom and Goldy's son move into the castle until their window can be fixed. Goldy finds that she left her disk with her recipes at the house and goes back, alone, to retrieve them, where she is, not surprisingly, bonked on the head by a thief stealing their computers.
Tom is investigating a the theft of a valuable shipment of stamps in which the delivery driver was murdered. The young man whose body was in the creek was part of that robbery. Since Tom in incapacitated, Goldy sort of takes over the investigation which seems to be linked not only to the castle and its chapel, but also to Goldy's ex-husband, recently released from prison and now hooked up with a woman who was dating one of the men involved in the stamp robbery.

This was an okay read. It seemed very contrived to me. Too many people tied to too many other people in such a small location. And that whole secret love child part of the plot was just silly and unbelievable.
For another review see: http://www.bookloons.com/cgi-bin/Review.ASP?bookid=886.

Deep South

By Nevada Barr

Leaving Colorado, Anna Pigeon has taken a position as the new district ranger on the Natchez Trace national park. She has two male rangers under her supervision one of which apparently resents his new boss. Not much time goes by before Anna discovers, with the help of her dog, the body of a teen girl. The girl, Danni, had a lot of baggage. An aspiring beauty queen, Danni's mom had insured her face for $40,000. Danni's brother is violent and angry, her mother is disturbed, her father indifferent, her boyfriend is upset, any one of them may have had reason to kill Danni. Or maybe she just was in the wrong place at the wrong time. As Annie discovers one dark night when she too is in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This was an OK story. At one point, a prankster puts a six foot alligator under Anna's car and it attacks her dog and cripples it. I guessed then that eventually Anna would end up having the crap beat out of her. And so it was. It made me think of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, who managed to solve crimes without getting themselves almost killed in the process.
One thing, though, was the information about the Natchez Trace, about which I knew nothing. So that part was interesting. Actually, this was a pretty good read, if not quite my cup of tea.

For another review, see: http://dancingbadger.com/deepsouth.html.

Trespasses

By Caroline Bridgwood

Set in the 1930s and 40s, this is the story of a British family, the Winstanleys.
Kitty Conway goes to live with the Winstanleys after her father dies, leaving her an orphan. Nim Winstanley was her mother's brother. He is the lord of Russington Hall and he has fascistic leanings, applauding what Hitler has done for Germany and claiming that Britain could learn a lot from him. Beattie is his wife and together they have several rambunctious children. The oldest is Irving and there are also Jack, for whom Kitty has a crush; Lexi, the blonde beauty; Frannie, who tries hard and is the same age as Kitty, and a couple younger ones. These kids are kind of wild and the girls are kept at home and educated by a governess who doesn't take her job very seriously. Kitty does her best to fit in and they are pretty nice to her, with some exceptions. But Kitty never does quite fit in, always a bit of the outsider, but not in a particularly painful way.
Everyone grows up and beautiful Lexi is engaged to marry a very wealthy young man. Shortly before the wedding is to take place, a young German man from her past appears and she runs off with him to Germany. When war starts, she is stuck there, with her two little children.
Frannie takes up with a Jewish man who is a communist. She follows him to Paris but he runs afoul of the Germans and is killed. She is also arrested and Kitty comes to France to try to help her. Jack is also in France, trying to make money on the black market. Kitty becomes part of Jack's black market activities. She also goes to Germany in an attempt to locate Frannie. She doesn't find Frannie, but she does find Jack after he is arrested for his black marketeering.
The war does finally end and the bedraggled remains of the Winstanleys come back home to Russington Hall, quite a bit changed by the events of the war, including Kitty, who, while not a Winstanley, still is pleased to be a part of their family.

Hello Darling, Are You Working?

By Rupert Everett

Rhys Waveral has had some success in his life. He had a role on a TV show that earned him a lot of money. After the show ended, Rhys moved to Paris, France to a room in a nice hotel. He lives a life of leisure, drinking too much, taking too many drugs, staying up too late, and pretty much just wasting his life. But then the money is gone, lost in an economic downturn. Rhys now owes the hotel a lot of money and he needs work as fast as he can get it. So when he is offered a lot of money to spend a few days with a middle-aged woman at a party in Morocco, he has his misgivings but accepts. After all, he is no stranger to hustling, having spent his teen years as a prostitute in London.
His parents are concerned as is his fragile wife and they follow him to Morocco. Their intention is to intervene but they all get caught up in the debauchery as Rhys becomes more and more disenchanted with the way his life has been going. Those who should be there to help are drowning in the drugs, booze and promiscuity that Rhys longs to escape. And escape he does, flying away on a plane to his final destination.

Rhys is not a happy person. He is just drifting through life, with no particular goals except easing his pain with liquor and drugs. The loss of his money forces him to confront himself and his lifestyle and he really doesn't like what he sees but fears he cannot change. He is not a pleasant character nor are any of the people in the story, they are all selfish, shallow and stupid. This book is supposed to be amusing, but I was not amused. And the ending is not happy. It is entertaining in its way, like watching a freak show, if you like that sort of thing.
For another review, see https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/rupert-everett/hello-darling-are-you-working/.

The Love Knot

By Rebecca Brandewyne

Orphaned as a little girl, Verity Collier has been working as a teacher at the orphanage where she was raised. But she hates it. The pay is poor, the accommodations uncomfortable, the food meager. So she accepts a governess position in the wilds of Cornwall, far from the hustle and bustle of the city.
Stopping at an inn for supper, she falls into conversation with a mysterious stranger whose face is hidden in shadow. Then, riding in her new employer's coach on the way to his manor, she robbed by a highway man who is very similar to the man at the inn. The robber tries to steal her locket left to her by her mother, and she refuses to give it up. He then slices a lock of her hair and takes that instead and she continues her journey to her new job as governess to Lord Ransleigh's two young children.
Ransleigh's kids recently lost their mother. She fell to her death from a cliff at the nearby sea shore and somehow the two kids were involved.
When Verity arrives, Ransleigh is absent, away on business. The staff is welcoming and her new home is everything her previous place wasn't. Plus the kids seem really sweet, if a rather subdued. But all is not perfect. Verity is hearing a strange and threatening voice, warning her that her life is in danger. And there is talk of French spies in the area. And Ransleigh resembles the highwayman who stole a lock of her hair. And the servants are whispering that Ransleigh actually threw his wife off the cliff, that her death was not an accident. Yes, there are a lot of secrets and strange occurrences at the manor house.

This was an okay story. Verity and Ransleigh, of course, fall in love and he, of course, is the highwayman and the dead wife, of course, got what she deserved. And Verity, of course, saves the day and they all live happily ever after. Nothing new here, just your typical Gothic romance story. A fairly good story, but nothing special or particularly memorable.

For another review see http://www.rtbookreviews.com/book-review/love-knot-1.

The Green Trap

By Ben Bova

Paul Cochrane is not at a good place in his life. He used to live in Massachusetts but moved to Arizona recemtly after his wife died in an automobile accident. But the change of scenery didn't really help that much. He does his job (he's a professor of astronomy) but other than that, he is just drifting.
Then his brother, who is a microbiologist in California, calls up and insists Paul come out there for a visit. The brother has something momentous to share with Paul but he won't tell him exactly what it is. So Paul flies out to California but arrives just in time to find out his brother has been murdered.
The brother has developed a process to extract hydrogen cheaply from water, a discovery that will revolutionize the energy industry. Needless to say, everyone wants to get their hands on his research. Some because they want to shut down big oil, some because they want to protect big oil and all because they want to make the big, big money.
Paul returns to Arizona and there he is visited by two people, both of whom want his brother's research and they are certain Paul has it or can get it. One of the people is soon dead and the other is a sexy and seductive woman who will do whatever it takes to get what she wants, which is money. She has a buyer for the research who will pay her $10,000,00 for it. She soon has Paul wrapped around her finger and convinced that she loves him.
Things go from bad to worse as various factions try to force Paul into giving up his brother's data. Paul finds himself threatened, beaten, terrorized and deceived. His world spirals out of control and he is driven to desperate measures, measures that gain him a brief triumph but ultimate defeat.

I hated this book. The characters, especially the woman, are not appealing. And the ending was just vile. A hateful and mean-spirited book, it has given me such a distaste for the author that I will never read any of his works again.

For another review see http://www.meridiansshadow.com/2011/08/review-the-green-trap-by-ben-bova/.

The Children of Anthi

By Jay D. Blakeney

Blaise Omari (BLZ-80-4163) is a member of the crew of the scoutship Forerunner. Omari is not his real name and he realizes he is facing imminent arrest by the authorities. So he hijacks the scoutship and takes it into the Uncharted Zone where it cannot be tracked.
The ship crash lands on the planet Ruantl and all aboard die except Blaise and fellow crew Saunders, a woman.
Blaise and Saunders are soon captives of a rough group of natives, the Bhan'jen. This group of Bhan'jen are controlled by Picyt, a Tlar. Tlar look very different from the Bhan'jen. Tlar are tall and attractive, Bhar'jen are smaller and hideous. Picyt is a kind of high priest and servant of Anthi, a sort of deity who turns out to be just a very powerful computer. Picyt is currently in a power struggle with the ruler of Ruantl, Hihuan. Picty sees in the arrival of Saunders and Blaise two technically proficient workers who can help the Tlar with their failing machinery.
Blaise is soon kidnapped by Hihuan's people and shot and dumped in the desert to die. Ruantl is a very hostile place, arid and subject to extreme storms and bathed in X-rays from its black sun. The locals all wear heavy cloaks and masks to protect themselves. Blaise has no chance to survive such conditions plus having been shot in the leg. Fortunately he is rescued by a tribe of Bhan and they return him to Picyt.
Blaise is pretty much done for when Picyt offers him a chance to survive. Asan, an ancient Tlar and the first ruler of Ruantl, sleeps in a high tech coffin. Picyt needs to raise Asan but to do so he needs a volunteer to provide the catalyst, infusing their vitality into the sleeper. Picty promises Blaise that Blaise will have a strong new body but what he really expects is that Blaise will die. However, Blaise survives the transfer and defeats the personality of Asan and takes control of Asan's body.
Hihuan is aware of what Picty has done. He sends his warriors to fight Picty's and Blaise and Saunders are caught in the middle. Blaise doesn't support Picty and he certainly doesn't support Hihuan who had him shot and dumped in the desert. Stranded on a poison planet, with no hope of rescue, caught in a terrible power struggle between three factions, Blaise and Saunders have to make the best of their bad situation. All Blaise wants is to survive. All Saunders wants is Blaise's head on a silver platter.

This was an OK story. I had a hard time keeping track of who had Blaise and what they wanted from him. I also had trouble keeping track of the various factions in the story. To me, the story was rather chaotic and Blaise is pretty much just a pawn for a lot of the story, stumbling from one disaster to another. Poor Saunders is more sinned against than sinning and doesn't deserve her ultimate fate. However, I did like reading about the Bhan and the Tlar, even though they seemed a little too human.
For another review see: http://sfmistressworks.wordpress.com/2014/03/11/the-children-of-anthi-jay-d-blakeney/.

A year in Provence

By Peter Mayle

Peter Mayle worked in advertising for a long time but quit to become a full time writer. He and his wife left England and moved to Provence, France. They bought an old farm house and proceeded to renovate it. This book is a fictionalized version of their first year in Provence.
In it they cope with the locals: the hunters, the repairmen, the wine makers, the farmers, the trufflers, and, best of all, the cooks. It's an orgy of classic French cooking, fresh meats, fresh vegs, fresh fruits, fresh breads and pastries, and bottle after bottle of local wines. Not a prepackaged food within sight.
All in all, Mayle makes Provence sound like heaven on earth. Except for the fact that it is full of tourists. And sometimes the weather is a little iffy.

I liked this book. I did think it was a tad condescending in its descriptions of the local people, but clearly affectionate in tone. Makes Provence sound very appealing, indeed. Probably somewhat glosses over the real Provence, as it mentions, just briefly, traffic jams and crime. However, I can see that it was likely a tremendous boost to tourism for the area, whether it needed it or wanted it. I think Mayle still lives there, though not in the same house as when the book was written. Apparently, his privacy was ruined after the book became such a huge success and the house became a tourist attraction.

May Contain Nuts

By John O'Farrell

Alice and David, like most parents, want the best for their three kids. So their youngsters lives are filled with activities designed to give them a leg up in life. Music lessons, language lessons, dance lessons, fencing lessons and on and on. Their oldest child, Molly, will soon be done with grade school and ready to move on to middle school (or whatever the equivalent is in England). But Molly, an otherwise bright eleven-year-old, is poor at math.
Her parents have their hearts set on a select local private school. This school has a rigorous entrance exam and Molly did not get a passing score in the math section of the practice test. Despite Alice and David's efforts to tutor her, Molly is not improving and is becoming sullen, nervous and anxious from all the pressure.
Alice, who is a small, thin woman, gets an idea. What if she dresses up as a child and takes Molly's entrance exam in her place? David thinks it is a super idea and helps his wife bone up for the exam. Only one problem, though. Molly inherited her poor math ability from her mother. And now Alice is enduring the same struggle Molly was, trying to prepare for the math section of the test.
Will Alice manage to get enough math under her belt to ace the math section of the test? Will she be able to fool the test proctors  and pass herself off as her own daughter? Or will she and David come to their senses and realize the terrible example they are setting for their children, that it is OK to cheat to get what you want? One can only hope.

This was a funny and enjoyable book, often laugh-out-loud funny. At one point, Alice loses a little weight and gets her gray hair dyed and buys some cute, preteen outfits and models them for her husband who reacts thus:

"You look fantastic. Except . . ."

"Except what?"
"Except I fancy you."
"What?"
"I'm really sorry but I fancy you. And seeing as there is no way I could fancy you if you looked eleven, it simply can't be working."

The only real drawback to the story was that the latter part gets a little preachy. I did find that a little annoying as I don't much care for preaching. Or preachers.

The Goblin Emperor

By Katherine Addison

Maia is the son of the emperor. But he is the youngest son, unwanted and exiled, with three older half-brothers. He never expected he would ever become emperor and neither did anyone else. He certainly was not raised to be emperor or prepared to be emperor. But the unthinkable happened. His father and his three brothers were all killed when their airship crashed. Suddenly young Maia is now the emperor and he doesn't have a clue as to how to behave or what to do. Friendless and alone, he has to cope with his weighty responsibilities and with all the double-dealing and intrigue that goes along with the imperial court. And the fact that Maia is half goblin doesn't endear him to his nobles who are all elves. Things go from bad to worse when it is revealed that the crash that killed the imperials was caused by an explosive device. And the killer or killers are aiming to take down the new emperor too.
Maia is a sweet kid forced to deal with a strange and often hostile new environment. His lack of self-confidence and his doubt of his own abilities are further strikes against him. Surrounded by plots and hateful relatives, Maia is mostly on his own. Drowning in luxury, waited on hand and foot, servants everywhere, Maia is the loneliest guy in the world. Alone, he has to figure out how to rule, who murdered his family and why. Plus try to stay alive.

This was a good story. Maia is unspoiled and untainted by the harsh treatment he received after his mother died and he was sent into exile with a man who hated and abused him. Foundering in a demanding and often cruel new environment, Maia still manages not to lose himself or give into his baser instincts.

I really enjoyed this book, but I did find it hard to keep track of all the characters and their strange and difficult names and titles, despite the guide in the back of the book.

For another review, see: http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/02/book-review-the-goblin-emperor-katherine-addison-sarah-monette.

The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains

By Neil Gaiman

The small man has some guilt he needs to deal with. His beautiful daughter disappeared and he leaped to the conclusion that she had run away. He didn't find out for a year that she was dead. He spent that year hating her. He is haunted by his failure and his misjudgment of his daughter, Flora.
Ten years have passed and now he is on a quest. He needs to find a certain cave on the Isle of Skye, a cave said to be filled with gold, there for the taking. He sets off on the journey and hires one Calum MacInnes as guide. Calum has been to the cave once.
As the journey progresses, the details of Flora's demise are gradually revealed. And the man's journey isn't just about the search for gold, it is also about the search for justice.

This isn't a long story, about 75 pages. But it is a very interesting and captivating tale. The truth is slowly revealed little by little and the tale changes from a search for gold to a search for revenge. An unforgettable folk tale.

More Than a Skeleton

By Paul L. Maier

Jesus has returned! Or has he? Is Joshua Ben Yosef really Jesus reborn or is he just a very smart con man? Joshua seems to have all the right stuff: born of a virgin who was married to Yosef, turning water into wine, healing the sick and blind, casting out demons, preaching sermons that are a new take on the gospel sermons. Charismatic, handsome, extremely intelligent, saintly, heralded by mysterious events, surely he is the Christ.
But Dr. Jonathan Weber just isn't buying it. And he digs deeper into the mystery of Joshua Ben Yosef, even at the risk of alienating his new bride, who is one of the many thousands of people who are convinced that Joshua is the real deal. But everything he discovers only reinforces Joshua's claim to be Jesus Christ incarnated.

At first I was put off by the Joshua character's aping of the acts of Christ.  Logically, why would it be necessary for Jesus to return only to repeat everything he did the first time? He already did all that. That just seemed really fake to me. Eventually, though, the story got a lot more interesting as Weber digs deep into Joshua's background. So, overall, it was a pretty good read, once I got over my annoyance with the Joshua character.

For another review see: http://www.bookreporter.com/reviews/more-than-a-skeleton.

Hank & Chloe

By Jo-Ann Mapson

Life had never been easy for Chloe Morgan. Raised in foster homes and subjected to abuse, her background included rape and an abortion. But she didn't let the tough times defeat her, helped through it all by her love of horses.
Chloe has a deep understanding of horses and the main focus of her life is working with horses. When she was younger, she feel deeply in love with a fellow horse trainer but he was a lot older than her and an alcoholic. They had many years together but he couldn't control his drinking and it eventually killed him. Chloe was devastated by his death and since then has avoided serious entanglements with men.
The story opens with Chloe attending a horse who having a hard time giving birth. Chloe's shirt gets dirty and she borrows a shirt from a man she has just met. Hank is a college professor and long time bachelor. But he is attracted to Chloe and manages to talk her into a first date.
Chloe's house gets raided by the police looking for drugs and Chloe is arrested. Hank comes to her rescue, bailing her out, getting her to the hospital to have her injuries attended to, taking her into his home, and finding a lawyer to fight the charges. Their relationship deepens but then differences in their backgrounds drive a wedge between them.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit. Chloe is stubborn and has a lot of "baggage" and Hank gets jealous and acts like a jerk. They are not the most likable of characters but they are very human and their story is wonderful.
For another review see: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/jo-ann-mapson/hank-chloe/.

Hotel Pastis

By Peter Mayle

Simon Shaw has a pretty good life. A busy advertising executive, he has a nice home, fancy cars, a manservant and plenty of money in the bank. What he doesn't have is happiness. His marriage has just ended and he is frankly bored with his job. He needs a change of scenery. So he goes to France, driving his Porche to Provence. But he has an accident in his car and it gets a little damage, requiring repairs. The local mechanic says it may be several days before the needed parts arrive. Which is OK, because Simon has just met an attractive woman whose car is also being repaired and it isn't long before they get together.
The woman, Nicole, eventually talks Simon into investing in a local building project and turning it into a hotel. Simon, who enjoyed his time in Provence and, especially, his time with Nicole, agrees and retires from the ad agency and spends lots of money fixing up the building to be a hotel. His manservant, Ernest, is a natural born hotel manager and takes over much of the work of the daily running of a hotel.
So the hotel opens and is a huge success, with some minor complications, including payoffs to the local mobster and the accidental kidnapping of a rich man's college-age son by a group of bike-riding bank robbers.

This was an enjoyable read. The author makes the area sound like heaven on Earth,  which I doubt that it is. I'm sure it has its charms but it must have it faults too, like anywhere. The story is light and no one gets hurt and all turns out well in the end for everyone, even the disenchanted Simon.
For another review, see:  http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20106712,00.html.

The Strange Bedfellows of Montague Ames

By Norton Parker

Montague Ames has only been married for a year, yet his wife Sheila is planning on leaving him. She is disappointed in him, he seems to have lost his passion, energy and enthusiasm.
Monty is struggling at work too. He is often lost in a daydream and at other times, briefly, he is filled with energy and ideas, but it quickly passes. After a strange outburst at work, his boss sends him home. He's not fired, but now his job is in jeopardy along with his marriage.
Looking for help, Monty falls into the clutches of a Freudian psychiatrist, Dr. Smythe. After just one session with the doctor, Monty has a personality crisis and he "births" his superego and his id. Now instead of one Monty, there are three, much to the joy of Dr. Smythe, who sees it as a great opportunity for study and experimentation. Smythe, it transpires, cares little about Monty's mental health and more about research, even to the detriment of Monty's well-being.
So now there are three versions of Montague Ames. His superego, who goes by the name of Walter, is smart, talented, dynamic and charming. Sheila, not knowing who Walter really is, falls hard for him, much to Monty's chagrin. And there is Ollie, Monty's id, a rough, brutish fellow who has a taste for raw meat and a certain animal attraction.
Walter, the superego, takes the world by storm, charms Monty's boss, Sheila, and everyone he meets, including the president of the United States. Thanks to him, the whole gang, including Smythe, end up living on an estate where the id, Ollie, plays havoc with neighbor's tame herd of deer. Walter and Ollie are also wooing Sheila as Monty sinks deeper into booze and depression and Dr. Smythe merely stands and observes, more interested in the research than in helping Monty. Monty hatches a scheme to save his wife and himself from his alter-egos, only to be threatened with confinement to a mental hospital. After all, who would really believe that Walter and Ollie are Monty's alter-egos made flesh?

This is a silly story and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's an old book, copyright 1953, but it is a fun look back at a time when smoking was not vilified and, apparently, everyone was a raging alcoholic. Kind of like the TV show Mad Men, these folks constantly have a smoke in one hand and a drink in the other.
This story is a madcap romp, goofy and funny, and a great escape from these modern times.

Pagan Babies

By Elmore Leonard

Father Terry was a Catholic missionary in a village in Rwanda during the genocide of the Tutsis by the Hutus, two tribes in conflict. Holding mass one Sunday, Hutu killers entered the church and slaughtered the Tutsi congregation in front of Father Terry and he was helpless to stop it.
Some years pass and Terry receives word that his mother has died. His mother was the reason Terry became a priest, it was her dream, not his. So he returns to the States.
Once there it soon transpires that Terry has a lot of old baggage he needs to deal with including a felony charge connected to smuggling and old friend who wants his $30,000 dollars back that Terry apparently absconded with when he went (fled) to Africa. A new added complication is Debby, an ex-con who has a serious grudge against her con-artist ex-boyfriend, who conned her out of $67,000. Debby and Terry join forces, Terry to raise money for his mission in Africa and Debby to get back her money from her ex.

I pretty much enjoyed this book. It is an interesting combination of grim reality and goofiness. The Rwanda part is horrifying and terrible and the interactions of the characters in the US are pretty goofy. Terry is a complex guy who is having a struggle trying to understand where his loyalties lie, with his own self-interest, with the people he left behind in Africa or with his family and friends, old and new, back home in Michigan. It remains unclear which way Terry will go and what his true intentions are, even to himself, until the very end of the story.
For another review, see: http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/09/17/reviews/000917.17desilvt.html.

Dolly Is Dead

By J. S. Borthwick

Dolly Beaugard was known for her good works. She volunteered and gave generously to local institutions. So when she turned up dead, it just seemed to be a tragic boating accident. But upon closer investigation, it was discovered Dolly's boat had been tampered with.  Her death was no accident, it was murder.
Born into a wealthy family, Dolly had no need to work for a living. Rather plain and stolid, Dolly never married and lived at home with her mother and various other members of her family, including two sisters and  her mother's brother, a retired professor. Dolly also had a brother but he didn't live at the house, he lived nearby with his wife and his son.
A few days  before Dolly's body washed up onshore, two local men were also found dead on the same shore, also apparently victims of a boating accident. But like Dolly, their deaths were not accidental. Small time crooks, the two men had nothing in common with Dolly. Yet they died within days of each other, in similar manner. Was there a connection? Or was it just a coincidence?

This story did not appeal to me. Mysteries are not a genre that I particularly like but I can enjoy one if it has a good story.  I didn't care for any of the characters in the story, villains, victims, family and the amateur investigators who are the main sleuths. I found it all rather dull, sorry to say. I stuck with it because I was curious to see what motive the killer had for murdering Dolly, who, during the course of the story, seems to have no enemies. Turns out it was a very weak motive and quite unbelievable. That was disappointing.
For another review, see https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/js-borthwick/dolly-is-dead/