Storymusing: The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett

 

The Twyford Code

by Janie Hallett

The theme for our book club in July was “something from your to be read pile.” A friend had recently read The Twyford Code and spoken so enthusiastically about it that I immediately added it to be my “to be read” file and picked it up for this month.

Smithy is out of jail after a prolonged incarceration, and still on probation. He has a crappy job and his adult son doesn’t really want any contact with him. He begins to record his thoughts on a mystery that started years ago when he found a book by Edith Twyford on a bus and took it to school. His teacher snatched it up and began reading it to the class, telling them there was a code in it. Then she disappears on a class outing and Smithy never let go of that mystery. Now he’s determined to get to the bottom of The Twyford Code and find out what happened to his teacher.

In the beginning, I confess I had some trouble settling into this book, due to the format. It is told through the guise of audio recordings by Steven “Smithy” Smith on an old smart phone his estranged son has given him. Those recordings have been transcribed by an automated process, complete with phonetic spellings of some words or outright misspellings. One simple example is Kos in place of ‘cause, Or the word “mustard” in place of “must have.” Those were not hard to figure out, in context. “Bore Moth” in place of Bournemouth took a bit longer.

I think my trouble getting into the beginning goes a little deeper than that though. Because the entries are someone talking into a phone using a voice recording app, the story is being told to us instead of action being described.

Further, there are places where a conversation is recorded between Voice 1 and Voice 2, back and forth. In writer’s group, we call this “talking heads” — two voices carrying on a conversation but no physical actions or setting to ground the reader. You can’t really picture it in your mind.

I’m really glad I stuck with it. This turned out to be a fascinating mystery with plenty of action and many twists and turns. There are revelations upon revelations regarding Smithy’s family and his previous work with a crime family.

The twist at the end was magnificent. I would highly recommend this one.

Storymusing - A Colorful Scheme (A Pen & Ink Mystery Novel) by Krista Davis

A Colorful Scheme: A Pen & Ink Mystery Novel

by Krista Davis

Our book club theme for June was “Secrets & Lies.” This one fell solidly into that category, but with a fairly lighthearted manner, at least as much as murder can be. The cover itself is a “Color-It-Yourself” cover. I’m thinking I might do a little coloring this weekend now that I’m done with reading the book. (But I also like to pass books on, so maybe not.)

Our amateur sleuth is Florrie Fox, a bookstore manager and coloring book creator. She lives on the grounds of the Maxwell Mansion, and her boss, Professor Maxwell, also owns the bookstore.

As the book opens, her boss is getting remarried in a lavish wedding. Little bit of a hitch, the bride is missing. Florrie soon finds her under very odd circumstances. But the party gets underway, with the wedding as a surprise to most of the party goers.

The surprise for the party throwers is a dead body in the swimming pool, come morning. It’s one of the guests and there’s a little more to his death than drowning.

The book has a warm tone with details of the surroundings and dress and food of a wedding. But there are also secrets abounding, from the innocuous, to those simply made up in the minds of people like the wannabe reporter, Cara, and understandably suspicious police officers.

As with any cozy mystery, there’s a second body drop. This one is more immediately identifiable as a murder, and somewhat gruesome. The bumbling nature of the police officer investigating is a tiny bit overdone, imho.

There’s a light romance too, as Florrie is dating a handsome police officer named Eric. There’s even a butler named Mr. Dubois, but I was impressed with how fully his character is treated as a person instead of simply window dressing.

It’s a very privileged world, and the author does gloss over the financial aspects of running a business, especially one that seems as busy as this bookstore. Do people still leave keys outside where anyone could find them? I’m sure some do, but it seems a bit convenient.

I really did enjoy this story and it would make a lovely light, summer read for anyone. I recommend for cozy mystery readers. 

 

Storymusing Review: Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto

 

Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers

by Jess Q. Sutanto

I was perusing our library’s cart of returned mysteries when I came across Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers. It looked good, and the book recommendation on the cover from Elle Cosimano, another favorite humorous mystery author, clinched the deal.

Vera Wong runs ‘Vera Wang’s World-Famous Teahouse’ in San Francisco. Unfortunately, the teahouse has gone out of fashion and she only has one customer left. Vera is a lonely widower whose only son is too busy to spend time with her. She texts him frequently, though he doesn’t often respond, and thrives on her routine of walking daily and searching the internet. Surprisingly, it isn’t an online scam that brings trouble to her door.

One morning she gets up and goes downstairs to find a man named Marshall has broken into her teahouse and died on the floor. Vera isn’t too happy with how the police handle the situation and decides to investigate on her own. She starts by placing an obituary for Marshall in the paper to draw the guilty party back to the scene of the crime.

Her plan works and four people show up— Rikki, Sana, Oliver, and Julia, carrying her daughter Emma. Rikki says he is a reporter for Buzzfeed and Sana says she runs a true crime podcast. Oliver is most clearly Marshall’s twin brother. Julia is Marshall’s wife, though he left her the day before.

It is less of a mystery to the reader about why these people are here than it is to Vera, because we hear the story from their perspectives as well. (It also makes it seem unlikely that one of them is the killer, in my opinion.)

As I read further in this book, there were a few things that required a suspension of disbelief. Primary is that Vera makes these amazing teas, seeming to know exactly what you need, but she only has one customer. Not one other tea lover has found her and become a fan, telling other tea lovers they know about it? That seems a bit odd. Tea drinkers make up a hefty percentage of the population.

That being said, I still loved this novel. The writing just drew me in and allowed me to suspend disbelief.

And you can’t help intensely disliking the person who was murdered. The mystery of who murdered him plays a lean second fiddle to the master machinations of Vera as she maneuvers people into talking about themselves and the relationships she helps bring to life.

I recently came across a post in a book forum asking for books that feel like a big hug. As strange as it may seem to put a murder mystery in this category, I think it applies to this one.

I began to wonder if this was even a mystery? About two thirds of the way through, though I knew Marshall was a jerk, I wasn’t sure he was murdered. He certainly could have been, but it might have been an accident, and I had real trouble believing that any of the people Vera considered a suspect, could actually have killed Marshall.

Well, I definitely didn’t see the truth that came out in the end. I highly recommend this book.

Storymusing Review: The Wormhole Cafe by G.H. Monroe

 

The Wormhole Cafe 

by G.H. Monroe

Our book group theme for April was "Travel." We allow our members to interpret the themes as broadly or loosely as they like. Time travel seemed like a good option to me.

The Wormhole Café. I've been looking forward to the release of this book since I read the first draft nearly ten years ago. I do know the author from my writer's group, but I will stand by my assertion that this is a very fine example of the genre. (I even know the closet in our local coffee shop where the wormhole is set.)

At one point, I accidentally left my copy at work and really wanted to continue reading at home. I thought to check our library Hoopla database and was very pleased to find it was there. Yay!

The characters are well rounded and engaging, drawing from a diverse group in a large town. Their voices are strong and distinctive. I could picture these characters easily.

Stacy, the first of our known time travelers, and is a teenager. She goes into the past where the vast majority of our characters reside. She’s had a hard time in her young life and is self-reliant, but she could use a friend. Enter Tess Yancey.

Tess is a part-time barista at a coffee shop and a part-time receptionist at a law office. Her  voice is pitch perfect for a good-hearted young woman with some self-assurance. Her chosen mission into the past is not for herself, and it’s not an emotionally easy one.

I LOVE the progression of the lawyer character that Tess works for, Gabe Denkenberger. He's a good guy though a bit pragmatic, in ways both slightly sleazy and noble.

There’s also Chief Corbett of the police, a little world weary, and has been fighting the good fight for decades. He’s a thoughtful person who wants to see justice done. But he also has something he wants for himself, and it’s not money.

There are a host of other characters that play small to moderate roles. Monroe did a wonderful job juggling and balancing then tying together all the varied story lines. 

Those story lines touch on some of the horrors of present day society. There is also suspense and even a mystery or two that are being solved.  There has to be a reason for these people to time travel and try to change the past, after all. But even the most horrific of the events only lasts two pages in the book. Then they become a motivation for the characters.

Nathan Jobe came home to find his family had been murdered. This broke his heart and mind. Tess Yancey is determined to stop it. But who killed Nathan’s family? Likewise, Chief Corbett could never forget the case of a child who disappeared. Who took her? His investigation will show him that he didn’t even have all the pieces.

And like life there is so much more to this novel than those story lines. There are relationships and friendships built between the characters that build through their interactions. It is a briskly paced story of many layers.

There are a small handful of typographical errors, but it really didn't impede my enjoyment of the story. I would have liked a little more spacing between the lines of text and a little more space in the gutter of the book, but I wouldn’t miss this book over that.

In the end, it is a very uplifting book. 

Storymusing Review: Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon

Death at La Fenice: a Novel of Suspense

Comissario Guido Brunetti #1

by Donna Leon

I find it funny that the author only wrote this book as a joke then put it aside before submitting it to a contest and winning. Now it’s the first book in a long running series (33 as of 2024) that has been made into a television series.

Comissario Guido Brunetti of the Venice police is called in to investigate when the world-renowned conductor Helmut Wellauer is found dead partway through an opera.

I really liked the organic way that Brunetti followed leads and pursued avenues of investigation with very few leads. He has questions, he gets answers, and those lead to new questions. He knows how to handle people and uses, not exactly psychology, but knowledge of human nature. He observes, and he remembers.

Brunetti’s forthright pursuit of truth is a wonderful foil to some of the other characters. Wellauer’s widow is significantly younger than he, but she seems to have truly loved him. And yet, there is something off about her reactions. Likewise with the star of the opera, Flavia Petrelli, and her companion, Brett Lynch.

Brunetti delves into Wellauer’s actions during the war in order to better understand his character, and learns some dark truths.

These questions lead him to Clemenza Santina, a former singer who worked with Wellauer long ago. I really felt the bitterness of the old lady having lost her family and being all alone. Perhaps part of that is the setting – the cold damp of her little apartment with the narrow hallway leading to a chair where she sits covered in old shawls.

There is subtle humor as well, as in the description of the doctor who confirms the conductor is dead at the opera “She pulled in a deep breath of smoke and glanced down at her watch. Mickey’s left hand stood between the ten and the eleven, and his right was just on seven.” A doctor at the opera smoking and wearing a Mickey Mouse watch? Okay.

One of the most interesting images to me was that of Brunetti walking through the streets of Venice in a thick fog and having to reach out to know where the wall is. I imagine that a lot of people could end up in a canal over time due to intoxication.

What led to the death is barely hinted at fairly early on, but we don’t really know until very close to the end. Also, who exactly killed him is a surprise and yet not. I had begun to suspect about halfway through.

I would highly recommend this as an atmospheric and well written police procedural. I’ll definitely read more in the series.

 

Storymusing Review: The Grey Wolf: A Novel by Louise Penny

 

The Grey Wolf: A Novel

by Louise Penny

November’s theme for our book club was “places you’d like to visit.” I’m afraid I didn’t so much look for books that fit that theme, taking me outside my comfort zone, as pick books I wanted to read anyway that were set in places I wouldn’t mind visiting.

British village? Yes, please. The Murders in Great Diddling by Katarina Bivald fit right in. I listened to that one on my commute and had many a laugh out of it. The characters were unique and quirky, bringing humorous twists to the traditional murder mystery. I highly recommend it.

My main read, The Grey Wolf: A Novel by Louise Penny, is set in Canada, throughout many parts of the countryside and Montreal, plus has characters flying off to Washington D.C. and Europe. I couldn’t have chosen a more perfect book for our theme if I tried.

I have wanted to read The Grey Wolf for a month, but it’s hard to get your hands on a copy in my library, digital or print. However, I was in a little village near home with my daughter and decided to stop in at the library there while we were killing time waiting for the farm store to open. Their display of books held not one, but two copies of The Grey Wolf. Small libraries for the win!

I’ve been reading in hard print whenever I can lately to help me unwind so I happily checked one out and sat down in my chair with a cup of coffee to start reading right after lunch.

The book begins with short chapters. I found each scene to be an individual puzzle piece with a certain color or pattern, defining a certain plotline or subplot of the story. As I read on, new chapters attached another piece to the puzzle until it all took on a shape and began to make sense.

Though the village in the story, Three Pines, is fictional, I love visiting there each time a new book comes out. It sounds so peaceful, with the village bistro for community and the little church to sit in and reflect.

The story opens in the village with our hero, Armand Gamache, head of the Surete in Quebec, relaxing in his garden with his wife, Reine-Marie.

A persistent caller that Armand does not want to speak to provokes him and our favorite village residents are soon drawn into the story. There’s the old poet Ruth and her swearing duck, the retired psychologist / bookstore owner Myrna, Gabri and Olivier who own the bistro, and the artist Clara. (Though I will say that Clara finding candy in her hair and actually eating it is a little off putting. But maybe that’s just me.)

Gamache is also surrounded by his family as the story progresses, with his daughter and son plus their families. There’s his trusty co-workers Jean-Guy Beauvoir and Isabel Lacoste.

Many important characters from past stories are revisited in this book, but not all in the capacity that we’ve known them. I was so disappointed in the choices some characters ended up making, characters we had once loved. But that is the crux of the story.

One of the biggest difficulties for Gamache in this book is knowing who to trust and who not to trust. Who are the bad guys? It’s not a new situation for him, but it’s a painful one at times.

How far will someone go? Do the ends justify the means? And keeping fear from leading to inaction is one of the biggest tests people often face.

One of my favorite parts of the book begins rather abruptly with Jean-Guy saying, “Oh God, oh God, oh shit.”

A pilot has insisted it’s okay to take off but now Armand and Jean-Guy are in a small plane flying through a storm and afraid they aren’t going to make it. The pilot isn’t sure anymore either.

The handling of the subplot for about thirty-five pages, intertwined with the rest of the story, the tension, feels like a masterful touch to draw the reader onward.

I adore the little bits of French that are sprinkled throughout the text, and the reminders that though we’re reading in English, they often aren’t speaking in English.

The pacing is not frenetic but it does move at a good clip. I think part of that is the judicious use of a variety of sentence lengths and the fact that there are tensions falling and rising, keeping the characters on their toes. I can’t stand stories where the tension rises and rises but nothing ever happens. Penny has things happen that the characters have to work through. She puts the characters in hot water and we see how they struggle and emerge, usually changed in some way.

I highly recommend this book. Three Pines is a wonderful place to visit.

Storymusing: The Haunted Season by G.M. Malliet

 

The Haunted Season

by G.M. Malliet

Well, I actually picked up a book in hard copy from our library for a change! I read one chapter at lunch and often one in the evening. It was just what I needed to unwind.

Our book club theme for October was simply “Spooky Reads” and I grabbed The Haunted Season based simply on its’ title and that it was a mystery, number five in the Father Max Tudor mysteries. It was a very pleasantly relaxing, slow, read set in the English village of Nether Monkslip.

I will admit that a couple of things gave me pause in the reading of the book.

First, Father Max Tudor is introduced in the most exalted terms. I almost gave up after reading it.

“…if Max had a fault, it was that he had been born open and trusting, expecting and generally receiving the best from people. Along with his handsomeness, it was the equivalent of a one-two knockout punch as far as women were concerned.”

Oh, really? I’m just not a fan of overly idealized characters. I prefer characters to look interesting. This had also come just after the author spent a very lengthy paragraph (fourteen lines) disparaging a middle-aged woman for her looks and the way she was dressed. Yeah, I almost chucked the book right there.

But, I kept going. I’m not big on giving up on a book and I’d already had a good prologue to pique my interest. In fact, the introduction of the junior priest in the parish, the Reverend Destiny Chatsworth, in a sauna where she overhears some incriminating conversation, was lovely. Unfortunately, we don’t see her again until nearly halfway through the book, and then only as a much more minor character. Kind of disappointing.

The mode of murder was interesting and the explanation of how it was accomplished was solid. Father Max is a former MI5 agent so that gives him some interesting background to draw on, and he’s quite besotted with his new son and his wise wife. (She seems a bit idealized as well.)

The identity of the murderer was not really something the reader could have figured out for themselves, but I’m okay with that. I was a little more annoyed by the *shocked gasp* presentation of who it was. While I couldn’t figure it out ahead of time, it wasn’t in any way shocking to me.

There’s a subplot going on that’s very minimal so its use at the end was a bit of a surprise.

I like the police procedural style of Father Max going and interviewing people, getting a lead, and following up on it, then reporting in with the local police. The plot is solid and pacing is good, edging toward slow.

I think the setting and description is one of the strongest points of the book.

“It was fall, and the patchwork fields around Nether Monkslip were changing color from gold and jade to bronze and topaz in that strange alchemy of the turning seasons.”

It’s a solid book, enjoyable and relaxing, I’d give it 3 stars out of 5. I might read another, but I also might look for something a little more modern. 

Have you read any of the series? What did you think?

Storymusing: The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

 

The Yellow Wallpaper

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Last month, my thematic book club did something a little different — we all read a short story together for discussion.

I had always thought of The Yellow Wallpaper as a story where the main character is suffering from post-partum depression. Her husband locks her in an attic room to “rest” and she slowly goes insane, fixating on the yellow wallpaper. After reading it again, I have a very different perspective. This time I looked at it as a potential crime, and maybe even a ghost story.

One of the funny things that came out of the discussion was that two of us, who had read it before, had the same mistaken memory —that the main character had been locked in an attic room by her husband. Now, he does choose the upper-level room for them as a bedroom, but she is not locked in until she does that herself toward the very end.

The narrator and her husband have secured “ancestral halls for the summer. A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate.” She says it might be haunted but laughs it off.

There’s a beautiful garden and nice rooms that open on it, but her husband insists they take the upstairs nursery because it is airy and big. The narrator thinks it was “a nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.”

In the article “House of Horror” (linked at the end) there is even the suggestion that enslaved people may have been kept restrained in this room and “By the end of the story the narrator has spotted ‘so many’ women who she believes have scrabbled free from the garish yellow prison.”

About her husband, she says, “He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction.” Which can be seen as being kind or nit-picking, depending on your perspective.

“If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression — a slight hysterical tendency — what is one to do?”

She is able to go out and walk in the garden or down the lane a little, but as the story progresses, she spends more and more time resting in the bedroom. “It is getting to be a great effort to me to think straight.”

She says her husband loves her so much “But he said I wasn’t able to go, nor able to stand it after I got there,” when she suggests a visit to her cousin. It sounded very much like house arrest.

She tries to convince her husband that she is not getting better and they should leave, but he insists on staying because they have three weeks left.

Of the wallpaper, she says, “It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others.” This was a light bulb moment for me. Green? Could arsenic be at hand?

The wallpaper is torn off in spots, the floor is scratched and gouged and splintered, and there’s a heavy bed bolted down. Very strange for a nursery.

“But there is something else about that paper — the smell!” The rain makes it worse and it gets in her hair. She even notices it when she’s outside if she turns her head quickly.

A little searching around told me that it was widely known at that point in time that wallpaper with arsenic often had a “mouse-like” odor in damp rooms or smelled like garlic, especially in damp conditions.

I couldn’t help thinking that if he is such a learned physician, was he suffering from a God complex, or just stupid? I mean, did he really not even consider the fact that arsenic might be in the wallpaper, since it was widely known by the 1890s, or was he trying to drive her insane? Only his behavior at the very end seems to absolve him.

And she is stuck there, getting weaker, while he is out of the house working.

She mentions her husband threatening to send her to Weir Mitchell in the fall if she doesn’t get better. “But I don’t want to go there at all. I had a friend who was in his hands once, and she says he is just like John and my brother, but only more so!” So, she does realize how domineering and condescending they are, I think. Gilman contended that her own experience with Weir Mitchell nearly drove her insane and this story resulted.

There are very distinct aspects of the story that merit a great deal of praise. The details are developed in beautiful fashion. It’s perfectly creepy and even quite horrific when you consider how much her situation is out of her control.

Here is a young woman suffering from post-partum depression, made to endure a rest cure in a house that may well be haunted by at least the collective trauma of enslaved people, and set up to spend most of her time in a room that has arsenic wallpaper, which can flake off and even become gaseous under damp conditions.

It's a master class of a story, from my perspective.

You can read the full short story yourself at https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/theliteratureofprescription/exhibitionAssets/digitalDocs/The-Yellow-Wall-Paper.pdf

I also read

The Feminist Gothic in “The Yellow Wallpaper”

https://www.lonestar.edu/yellow-wallpaper.htm

House of horror: the poisonous power of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/feb/07/charlotte-perkins-gilman-yellow-wallpaper-strangeness-classic-short-story-exhibition

Death on the doorstep: Arsenic in Victorian wallpaper

https://www.slam.org/blog/arsenic-in-victorian-wallpaper/

Story Musing: Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson

 

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

by Benjamin Stevenson

As usual, I was looking for something on Hoopla that I could listen to on my ride to and from work. (I love how everything on Hoopla is always available, no matter who else has it checked out. It’s a great service my library provides.)

I’ve been enjoying murder mysteries, as I often do, and this title caught my attention – Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone.

I opened up the description and two things about it tempted me. First, they compared it to the movies Knives Out and Clue, both great recommendations for me. Second, the author is from Australia. I haven’t read too much by Australian authors, but it intrigued me. Different countries have slightly different senses of humor and I enjoy that. Sign me up.

One quick note – this author uses a breaking of the fourth wall where the narrator speaks directly to the reader. Some people hate that. Some people, like me, love that. Not every book is for every reader. As they say, you do you.

There was so much going on in this book that I was never bored. The writer could take us down one thread, skip to another and come back. Transitions felt smooth. There was plenty of humor and great description from the narrator and situations.

Our story starts when Ernest’s brother Michael shows up wanting him to help bury a body. A lot happens in that little chapter and ends with Ernest calling the police.

Fast forward several years. Michael is getting out of jail and the family gathers to welcome him out. For some reason, at a ski resort.

“I am normally resolute in declining any invitation that comes with an Excel spreadsheet attached.”

Perhaps Ernest should have refused this one.

Little mysteries abound. Ernest’s cousin Sofia has been suspended from her surgical practice. Why? What happened when Ernest’s father died? That has more than a few twists. You know there was a third brother. Why is he never discussed? (The resolution to that mystery was, I thought, incredibly sad and poignant.) Who the heck is the man who appears in the snow, dead, at the ski chalet?

I love how the author strung out the information so that you learn things along with the narrator. It keeps you guessing, but at the same time, you are never bored. There’s always something interesting going on, some revelation being made.

I loved the narrator’s voice, like in the section titled “My Wife” with only one sentence in Chapter 9 – “I don’t want to talk about it.”

I really, sincerely, thoroughly enjoyed this book and am looking forward to more by the author. If you like mysteries, give this one a chance.

A Musing Round-up of Stories

 

What I’ve been reading….

Because I read and adored The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, by Gabrielle Zevin, I was wildly excited to see that they had made a movie of it last year. (Bonus, it stars Kunal Nayyar, best known for his role as Rajesh Koothrappali on The Big Bang Theory.) I haven’t watched it yet, but I decided to see what else the author had written in the meantime. I found All These Things I’ve Done, a YA novel about a young woman in the future who is the daughter of a Russian American chocolate manufacturer, the Balanchine family. It’s sort of a mob situation as chocolate and coffee are illegal in the U.S.. Her parents are long gone and her older brother suffered a traumatic brain injury sometime ago, while her younger sister is a genius, and her grandmother is dying. Anya is trying to take care of everyone and keep it altogether. It’s intriguing as the situation progresses, if a little melodramatic. Sadly, the performance of the book was a little one note on the audio recording. I might have enjoyed it a lot more if I’d been reading a physical copy. I gave it just 3 stars.

The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware - This one is worth a solid 4 stars. Fascinating, engaging, kept me guessing a good bit, and very well read by the actors. A thriller and the first book I’ve read by this author, it did not disappoint. Hal is a tarot reader on the Pier. She took over the booth to make ends meet after her mother was killed in a hit and run, but it hasn’t been quite enough and she borrowed money from a loan shark. Things are looking quite dark when a letter arrives about an inheritance. Hal figures it’s a mistake, but the details fit enough that she might be able to claim enough money to get her out of the dangerous hole she’s in. It’s worth a shot, but she doesn’t take into account the emotional toll of suddenly having a long lost family, or what some other people may be willing to do to keep things the way they were.

Paper Cuts: A Secret, Book, and Scone Society Book by Ellery Adams. It’s always a pleasure to pick up the latest in this series. I had pre-ordered it and devoured it in just a few days. I’m a bit sad it’s over. Nora runs a thriving bookstore in Sulphur Springs, a resort town in North Carolina. Her friends are three local women who have had heartaches of their own but come together to support each other and all are thriving. Then a ghost, or two, arrive from Nora’s past. One is the woman who her husband left Nora for years ago. The woman, Kelly, has come to make amends and ask a favor. Nora pushes her away but then regrets. She knows Kelly is sick and dying. She decides to go talk to Kelly but it’s too late. Kelly has been murdered, putting Nora and her boyfriend, Sheriff Grant McCabe, on opposite sides of a line as Nora is the main suspect at first. It’s a great story with wonderful characters and details. I highly recommend this book and the series. 4.5 stars.

I’m still processing Drama Free: A Guide to Managing Unhealthy Family Relationships by Nedra Tawwab, and reading The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D.. The latter is a dense book and I have underlined a LOT. (Don’t worry, this is a personal copy, it doesn’t belong to the library.)

I’ve been enjoying leafing through Honey, Baby, Mine: A Mother and Daughter Talk Life, Death, Love (and Banana Pudding) by Diane Ladd and Laura Dern, and reading some of their conversations. Though I often don’t care for books about celebrities, I find the ones in their own words can be illuminating and this has a central theme that I was interested in.

For light-hearted fair, I’ve picked up Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers, a favorite mystery author of mine. It’s an old book and I may have read it before but if I did, I don’t recall, so it’s a good time to pick up a Lord Peter Wimsey mystery and this is the first in the series.

I’ve also just gotten The London Séance Society by Sarah Penner in audio for my drives. So far, it’s quite intriguing. She wrote the very enjoyable upmarket Lost Apothecary. I’m sure this one will be no less diverting.

Anyone reading anything good? Let us know in the comments.

Book Musing: The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill

 

Our Thematic Book Club chose “Inked” as the theme for November. Nowadays that generally has something to do with tattoos but, after thinking about what type of book I wanted to read this month and looking at the offerings, I used “Inked” to mean written and this one is tied to the Boston Public Library.

I listened to The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill, narrated by Katherine Littrell, through our Hoopla app.

The book opens with a letter to a novelist from an adoring fan, named Leo, as a prologue of sorts. It suggests that this fan has been corresponding with her for years. The relationship sounds erudite and friendly. “As for your enquiries about how my own book is coming: Well, I spent Friday at the library. I wrote a thousand words and deleted fifteen hundred.”  A piece of humor any writer could relate to.

Chapter one opens from the perspective of Freddie, a young novelist from Australia living in Boston. She is trying to write in the Boston Public Library and is finding it difficult to focus. She looks around at the people sitting at the same table she is.

One young woman “has divested her jacket to reveal full-sleeve tattoos on both arms. I’ve never been inked myself but I’m fascinated.” (I’d forgotten this character had tattoos, or “ink.”) She’s also reading a psychology text book. Is this a student or a patient? She is dubbed “Freud Girl.”

Across from her is “Heroic Chin” in a Harvard Law sweatshirt. (His name is Whit, she will soon learn.) “Handsome Man” (Cain) is also sitting at the table and she thinks he might just be a writer too.

“And then there is a scream. Ragged and terrified.”

People start murmuring, packing up to leave, but the security guards enter and demand everyone stay where they are until the situation is sorted out. (Very stagey, for my money. Reminds me of the plays I was involved in high school drama club.)

But it is effective as they sit down while a law student starts spouting off about illegal detention. There is some witty banter and the four introduce themselves. Finally the guards release them without having found the source of the scream. The four decide to get coffee together and the narrator reveals that one of the others is a killer, though she did not know it at the time.

This is, we learn, the book being written by Australian author Hannah Tigone, a mystery writer. We find this connection through another letter from Leo Johnson, the beta reader and fan. It turns out Hannah cannot travel to Boston to research her latest novel, because of Covid restrictions. Leo offers lingo at first and fact checking. Hannah also writes him into the story

Each chapter of Hannah’s book is followed by the latest correspondence from Leo, who becomes more and more invested in her novel, as Freddie’s story progresses. Eventually the reader realizes that Leo is, perhaps, a little too invested.

There are TWO mysteries-one for Hannah and one for Freddie. BOTH were engaging and kept this reader guessing. I had two suspects particularly in mind but found myself waffling between all four of the people who met in the reading room. (Yes, even the narrator at times. An unreliable narrator is an interesting story device, after all.) And also the next door neighbor character Hannah names for her pen pal, Leo.

The revelations just kept coming about all the characters. They were well spaced out and well placed in the plot to keep the story moving forward. The details of the Boston setting were highly entertaining.

I thoroughly enjoyed the layers to this story and look forward to more from this author.

Bonus, it turns out this is one of the books chosen by our Friends of the Library group for their Books Sandwiched In talks during the winter. I’m one book ahead already!

Book Review: The House on the Lake by Holly Hill Mangin

 

The House on the Lake

by Holly Hill Mangin

 

I had the pleasure of welcoming Holly Hill Mangin to our library recently on a visit from her home in France. She had grown up in the area and went to college regionally but then life took her to France where she now lives with her family and works.

Prior to her reading and author talk at our library, I had the chance to read her book. I was very impressed at the level of writing and editing from a fairly new author. It seems like even with books from long time authors in big publishing houses, there are a number of mistakes in every book, but I did not find that here. Her language was very fluid and natural too, a good balance of sentence structure which you might not notice but is very pleasing to the reader.

The story itself reminded me of Lois Duncan books of my teens, the young characters confronted with a spooky situation they must puzzle out. I can honestly say that out of all the possible outcomes I imagined for the book, the end was different and very satisfactory.

The story beings when Eve Beckett wakes up in a house on an island. How this could have happened is a mystery as she is terrified of water. The two caretakers cannot, or will not, shed any light on how she got there. As she talks with them, her mirror twin arrives in the kitchen, uncertain how she got there either. As Eve begins to explore the manor house, the mystery deepens.

At first the book reminded me a bit of The Haunting of Hill House as the house itself starts to take on a life of its own with rooms moving. There’s also the added mystery of the young man who represents the owners of the house and his brother who is there too. The young man seems okay but there is something sinister about his brother and yet Eve is drawn to him.

What unfolds is a mix of psychological thriller, young romance, and house mystery. I thoroughly enjoyed it and am looking forward to the sequel, which we are assured is coming. In fact, the author told us that the idea for The House on the Lake came out of a dream she had about exploring an old house and what she found in the rooms. As she wrote, she found she had two books in one and when she separated them out, that was when this book really came to life. The next book she plans to write will be from the viewpoint of the twin sister. I look forward to reading it!

We purchased one copy of the book for the teen section of our library and I gratefully accepted a second copy from the author for the adult fiction section. I hope some people will find it and enjoy it.

As every author knows, book talks are uncertain for any author. This was the first time Holly had done one so we corresponded a little about how to set it up and decided to do a fire side chat in our Reading Room at the library, where people might overhear and wander in.

This has its advantages and disadvantages. As she was reading, the conversations from the Circulation Desk were a bit intrusive but she did very well in maintaining her focus on reading. I can only hope it wasn’t too much of a distraction for the people who attended.

It seemed to me that a couple people who attended were old school friends of hers, and several were family members, as is not unusual. Serendipitously, two board members from another library had stopped in to see our library after giving blood nearby and decided to join the book talk, buying a copy of the newest book for each of them and one for their library. They contributed many questions to keep the discussion lively.

I also had a list of questions for the author about her writing experience and the book. One of the things I asked was about how she started writing. Many of us have the interest in writing but need some trigger to get us started and something to help us follow through. For Holly it was an author she had followed on Facebook. He had posted that he was looking for someone to co-write a book with and she responded. After some correspondence, he decided they would work well together and she co-wrote a book with him.

Holly has several other books available on Amazon and I look forward to reading them. I wish her well in her writing and publishing journey!

A Merry Month of May Multitude of Book Musings (Too much?)

 

This month I’m taking a page from some friends and sharing what I’ve been reading, what I liked and didn’t like about the books, and any musings about them. I guess I’ve hit a few genres this past month.

What I’ve been reading - 

The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow – This book brings together a wide variety of elements in a single masterful alternate timeline historical novel. The three Eastwood sisters represent ancient archetypes of mother, maiden, and crone. Agnes Amaranth is a single mother to be, working in a sweatshop, who falls in love with a man who has used his own limited witchcraft to advocate for worker’s rights. Beatrice Belladonna is a librarian who, far from a spinster yet, finds romance with a female journalist, if she can trust herself. James Juniper is a young maiden with a deadly secret. The three find each other again and themselves embroiled in the fight for the woman’s right to vote and to practice witchcraft, after fleeing their father’s farm. I’ve read everything else written by this author to date and just love her style and depth. I highly recommend this book, without reservation.

The Vanishing Type by Ellery Adams – I love this series for so many reasons, not the least of which is because I love books in general. As a librarian, reading a mystery series where the main character is a former librarian turned bookseller who adores books and recommending them to patrons in her store, is just my idea of heaven. She mentions so many books that I recognize, and so many I don’t, that even the non-mystery portion of the story is fascinating. I also adore how she often finds books to help people with troubles in their life, something called bibliotherapy. With this story, Adams builds layer upon layer of mystery into the story. Nora is the owner of Miracle books, while her friends from the Secret, Book, and Scone Society include Hester, Estella, and June. They’ve come to trust and rely on each other. They do so again as Hester’s secret about the baby she gave up for adoption comes out into the open just as her boyfriend proposes. It’s a bumpy ride but Adams keeps us on the rails.

The Nobel Lecture in Literature 1993 by Toni Morrison – This lecture begins with Morrison relating a folk tale that she has heard in numerous cultures, about young people challenging an old blind person and that wise person putting them in their place. But then she extends the tale, asking, what if the wise person and the young entered a dialog to better understand each other – how much more could come of it? I had the sense that I would need to read it again and again to find the meaning within it. The second part was a simple acceptance speech of the award and thoroughly inspiring to me because it spoke about the writers of the future. Perfect for any aspiring writers.

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler – I picked this book up thinking that the title indicated a comforting read. For some reason, the description didn’t disabuse me of the notion. I started reading and it was intriguing, if a bit lackluster. After a while, something reminded me of another book I’d read and I realized I’d read one other book by this author and didn’t care for it. I hate to put a book down and kept reading, soon finding that this book was really about one of the most dysfunctional families I’ve ever read about. The writing is interesting, it draws you on, your mouth drops open on a regular basis at the things people do. It’s not my cup of tea but the book is well written. If you like a slice of life about dysfunctional families, then this book is for you. I found it . . . unsatisfying.

The Taming of the Few: Guardians of the PHAE Book 1 by Rowan Dillon – Though this is a first urban fantasy for this author, it is not her first book. I admit that she is a member of my writer’s group and I have enjoyed her historical fantasy stories for years. The characters in this tale are thoroughly entertaining, from irascible Max with his Vietnam era PTSD and ability to talk to the wind, to swim coach Anna’s growing ability to convince the water to do her bidding, as iridescent scales slowly cover her arms. It seems a shift in the magnetic poles has caused magic to come to the surface in many people. These latent abilities have stirred fear in some and there is brewing resentment as factions move toward unrest and armed conflicts. I’m thoroughly enjoying the tale, though I’m only 30% of the way in.

Book Review: Swamp Spook: A Miss Fortune Mystery by Jana DeLeon

 

Swamp Spook

by Jana DeLeon

This is another entry in the Miss Fortune series. The first half didn’t hold my attention very well, though it was funny enough to keep me reading.

They are somewhat formulaic, like so many series, but things did get pretty complicated in the second half, making it more interesting. The best thing about these books is the ridiculous situations that Fortune, Gertie, and Ida Belle get into.

Fortune Redding is a former CIA assassin. She’s hiding out in Sinful, Louisiana because an agency leak put a price on her head. At this point in the series, the whole town knows who she is and she has decided to start a P.I. agency, with help from her friends Ida Belle and Gertie, who were military spies in Vietnam decades ago.

Fortune is also dating the local Deputy, Carter LeBlanc.

The book starts with Fortune being cast as the chainsaw murderer in the local Halloween hay maze. The only problem? While they are on break, someone puts a real dead body in the maze, with its head cut off.

The corpse turns out to be a local prominent business man. Was he murdered? Maybe, maybe not. So how did he end up in the maze, and why? There’s a young wife, a financially burned business partner, and even a butler.

With the town busybody, Celia Arceneaux, breathing down her neck, Fortune doesn’t need this kind of trouble. Celia knows just who to complain to and soon the state police are in town, making Carter’s life miserable and investigating Fortune.

Whether Gertie is accidentally crawling through poison ivy then swelling up or the threesome are setting a treadmill on fire, it’s the absurdity that keeps this book moving along and the reader laughing.

I would definitely recommend these mysteries to anyone who likes a comedic mystery.

Book Review: Death in Avignon by Serena Kent

 

Death in Avignon

by Serena Kent

This is a murder mystery, people die, but somehow it is once of the most relaxing genres I know and this is a prime example. 

I listen to a podcast called Shedunnit, created by Caroline Crampton, and I remember her talking about how mysteries were so popular post WWI because they were predictable. You knew the resolution would arrive and the detective would win through. It was just a matter of how. Perhaps that’s why I enjoy them so much. I really enjoy a good puzzle too, like Soduku, it’s very satisfying to finish something like that.

I admit I’m not one of those people who are able to follow all the clues and arrive at the solution to the puzzle before the author reveals it. I’m just along for the ride. So I can’t evaluate it on that criteria. I can only say, I didn’t really see the resolution coming.

This is the second book in this series and I so enjoyed the first, that I bought this one as soon as it was available. The main character is Penelope Keet – a retired ex-pat from Great Britain living in France. She worked for the Home Office and assisted the Coroner.

The mystery begins when Penny goes to an art show and the painter, Don Doncaster, who Penny doesn’t really like right off, collapses. He is taken to hospital and seems to be improving. They find he was poisoned. Then he takes a nose dive and dies. He isn’t the only one to die in this book, and all the deaths seem centered around the art world that Penny has just been introduced to.

She isn’t alone in her investigation – she has her new friends, like the handsome mayor Laurent, who she never seems to manage to have a dinner alone with, and the real estate agent, Clémence, who is a truly chic French woman.

When Clémence had left, Penelope went back to her Rachmaninov. But it failed to catch fire or to calm her conflicting emotions. Much as she had come to like her, seeing Clémence still made her feel inadequate.

They are intimately involved with the mystery as one of their friends, who is an art expert, disappears. Is he under suspicion? Laurent and Clémence take significant umbrage at the suggestion.

There are new friends here too, as Penny meets people in the art world and the music world of the nearby communities. Plus, her brash old friend from Britain, Frankie, returns.

The conversations flow naturally, and the descriptions are often lovely.

As the road climbed, the curves and wind-sculpted stacks of red soil emerged from the pines like a fifties actress letting a fur slip from her bare shoulders.

There are little bits of reality that one can relate to, as well.

After all the years of marriage and motherhood, it still felt self-indulgent simply to eat what she wanted, when she wanted, with no one else to please, or cajole, or disappoint.

I think my favorite parts of this book aren’t even necessarily the puzzle, but the relationships between characters we meet, and the descriptions of the countryside and setting.

There is a large cast in this book, but they are introduced at a reasonable pace and differentiated so that one can keep track. Plus, some are familiar from the first book and some are new.

For a relaxing puzzle mystery, I highly recommend this series. It began with Death in Provence and you can read my review of that one here http://storymusing.blogspot.com/2021/04/book-review-death-in-provence-by-serena.html

Book Review: Death in Provence by Serena Kent

 

Penelope Kite is a divorced British woman who left the coroner’s office when her boss retired. After a difficult Christmas with her stepchildren, she decides to take an extended vacation for a couple weeks in Provence. She finds herself looking at potential properties.

“Perhaps she shouldn’t have drunk all that delicious rose. It had made her bold.”

Boldness is decidedly what she will need, as she purchases a property that needs a good deal of TLC to bring it back to life. There are wasps, and crumbling plaster, villagers who greet her with some reservation, along with a dead body in the clogged pool.

But Le Chant d’Eau has marvelous views, old stones, and beautiful atmosphere. Penny is not going to be run off easily, not by a difficult “Chef de Police” or a movie star handsome mayor.

One dead body isn’t that much of a problem. Call the police, have it removed, and have a service clean out the pool and make sure it is sound.

The problems, however, don’t quite end there, and as fast as Penny meets people who become friendly in the village, there are also mounting dangers.

As a former employee of a genius coroner, Penny is not without a certain amount of knowledge in investigations, even if she is an amateur. She definitely has “le courage.” Will it be enough? It must, because this is a cozy mystery. But how will we get to the satisfactory conclusion? What twists and turns will we find along the way? That is the joy of a cozy mystery and it is well accomplished here, along with a healthy dose of armchair travel to Provence. I highly recommend this one.

I find it interesting that Serena Kent is actually the pen name for a husband and wife writing team, much like on of my favorite fantasy authors, Ilona Andrews. I’ve also enjoyed humorous adventure books written by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer. These male/female writing teams bring something special to the page that I really enjoy. If you’re looking for some more reading, check them out.

Book Review: The Dark Archive by Genevieve Cogman

 

The Dark Archive (The Invisible Library: Book 7)

by Genevieve Cogman

This has been a thoroughly entertaining series and the latest book is one of her finest. Action, mystery, Fae villains (and allies,) Dragon royalty, The Library, snarky comebacks, precise descriptions, some surprises – it’s a perfect diversion for the winter months.

“Irene began to descend the stairs, her mind whirring with possible plans. A pity that so many of them ended up in And then he shoots me.”

Irene is a librarian but not your archetypal one – she’s also a spy tasked with gathering books from different worlds to hold in The Library, which helps balance the worlds of order with worlds of chaos.

In Cogman’s world, or worlds, there are humans, which includes librarians, Fae who are chaotic, and Dragons who represent order. There are a multitude of worlds, exactly like the Earth, that can be traveled between. Events on the worlds often diverge at different points in the timeline. 

There is a truce in force between dragons and Fae, and the librarians are the neutral party. Here, Irene is tasked with trying to find a way to get her young apprentice, Catherine, a Fae, into the library. Her mentor, Coppellia, tells her it is necessary, but it seems impossible. 

Meanwhile there seems to be an assassin on the loose and nasty little mind controlling metal snakes that remind me of a particular Doctor Who mechanism. 

There’s a strong steampunk feel to this series as most of the worlds we visit tend to be during a time period in the mid to late 1800s and largely British, though the technology can be more modern.

The return of many favorite characters, including Detective Vale and Inspector Singh, as well as a few key villainous suspects make for an entertaining clash. I highly recommend this adventure for some fairly light reading.

.