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This week I read two cozies, one I liked very much. The other not so much.

An A-list for Murder is the second in the Evelyn Gallagher series by Amy Patricia Meade. Evelyn is working on another movie with Hitchcock at the beginning of WWII. She meets a sobbing young woman, Phoebe Dillon, in the bathroom. The next day, the body of the young woman is discovered in an empty lot and soon after an article slandering her appears in the paper. Evelyn contacts her friend, Lt. Ziegler and is soon involved in questioning people who knew the girl. At an event, Evelyn meets Ted Dorton and he swears he did not write the article about Phoebe.And Alex, Evelyn’s love, makes a surprise appearance.

As Evelyn investigates, she discovered the girl’s murder had far more to do with world events than the movies, involving, among other things, the Nazi efforts to keep the US out of the war.

This one is even better than the first one was. Highly Recommended.

I also read Hiss me Deadly by Miranda James. Librarian Charlie and his cat Diesel are involved in another mystery. The return of an Athena native, who ran away at 16 and made a huge success of himself as a musician, has the town in a tizzy. Wil wants to talk to Charlie; the young man feels something is off and wants Charlie to look around. Charlie soon discovers that Wil’s success, breaking up a local band, has caused some hard feelings. When the lead singer of the high school band shows up at an event featuring Will and his current band, and is electrocuted, Charlie realizes that the situation is far more serious than he realized.

Several other murders occur before Charlie finally understands what is happening.

The beginning of this book was interesting (although I found Diesel not at all catlike.) However, about halfway through, the story got away from James. It read as though she’d put down the book and picked up the story later; it didn’t really hang together. So, not terrible, but not wonderful either.

The Basilica Cistern and the spice market

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One of the most interesting sights in Istanbul is the Basilica Cistern, an enormous underground cistern. Ancient columns hold up the building above, some very ancient. Prior to the creation of the cistern, a Basilica stood on this spot. This was probably in the 3rd or fourth centuries of the Roman Empire. It is an eerie feeling walking underground (on a new concrete walkway) with water all around.

At the base if two of the columns are Medusa heads. No one is quite sure where they came from or why they are there. However, I wouldn’t be surprised to know they were simply repurposed from older columns. We saw many examples of newer buildings with much older stone blocks or columns.

Locals drew water from the cistern until the mid eighteen hundreds but the cistern is no longer used as a water source.

The other sight we saw was one of the largest spice markets. An indoor market crowded with tiny niches, all with different specialities, this one is one of the largest in Istanbul. It smells powerful of spices. I bought a tea, which came as leaves and berries, and saffron. Even in Turkey, one of the largest exporters of saffron, it was pretty expensive.

This is what the crowd looked like outside; it was even more crowded inside.

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I picked up Lost and Found In Prague, by Kelly Jones, because I have been in Prague. It did not disappoint.

Dana Pierson receives a frantic note from her cousin Caroline, a Carmelite nun in Prague, that she needs Dana’s help. Dana and Caroline had gone to Prague some twenty years previously, arriving during the Velvet Revolution when the then named Czechoslovakia separated from Communist Russia. Dana had gone home but Caroline remained, having fallen in love with a Czech.

When she arrives, Dana has trouble meeting with Caroline. An old nun has died in the church and the nunnery is closed to outsiders. At the same time a priest, Giovanni Borelli arrives at the request of the church’s priest. They form a duo of sorts to investigate not only the nun’s death but the disappearance of the Infant of Prague. The local detective Damcek, who is investigating the assassination of a senator, becomes an unlikely ally.

The mystery becomes more intricate than I expected, involving a long ago murder, blackmail, political chicanery and more as well as the death of the nun and the disappearance of the religious artifact.And yes, Dana goes to many of the places I visited while in Prague.

Recommended.

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Burning Ridge is the fourth installment in this series by Mizushima. In this outing, a partially burned body is discovered on a high ridge in the Colorado Mountains. When Mattie Cobb and Robo are called in to investigate, the case spirals into something much more serious. Three more bodies are discovered and this time Mattie has a personal connection to the murders. But Mattie, Robo and Cole Walker persevere and not only identify the murderer but also a sprawling case involving drugs and human trafficking.

I love these books. The mysteries are great and the relationship between Mattie and Robo is wonderful. I also really like that Robo is a real dog, not an anthropomorphized animal as one sees so often in cozy mysteries.

Highly Recommended.

This is the second in the Tuscan mysteries.

A famous, but arrogant and unpleasant, wine critic drives off the road and is killed. But the tox screen reveals he has been poisoned by antifreeze. Nico is drawn into the investigation of the victim’s wife, and all the vintners who owed him money. All the regulars are here: Nico’s relatives who run the restaurant he works in, The Dante quoting Gogol, Perillo, and Daniele Donato.

The mysteries are great but even more appealing is the wonderful setting and the descriptions of the food. Read a chapter and you are hungry! My only criticism is I wish there was a glossary of the food names, most of which I had to look up.

Highly Recommended.

Rhodes

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Before I move on to Istanbul, I want to talk a little about Rhodes. It is the ninth largest island in the Aegean and is famous for the Colossus of Rhodes. An enormous statue of the sun god Helios, it was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

The gate into the old city.

Like most of the Aegean, Rhodes has a long history, full of conquests, immigrants, and repeated changes to the governance. The island had a Minoan colony in the Bronze Age, which gave way to the Mycenaeans. In the Middle Ages, the Knights of Jerusalem, for example, were expelled from the Palestine, they went to Rhodes and governed the island for over 200 years, running the island from 1310 to 1522. The Knights were expelled from Rhodes by the Ottomans. In 1912, the island, as well as the rest of the Dodecanese, were seized by the Italians. Now, once again, it is Greek.

The old town is really old, with remnants from every one of the occupations.

Look closely at the upper part of the wall. The shields of the different nationalities of the Knights are represented.

Finally, here is a sample of what the streets in the old town look like. Not for cars, that’s for sure.

My take-away from these travels is that most of Europe has seen repeated conquests and/or floods of immigrants with their own cultures and languages. And not just in the Aegean. In Prague, for example, out tour guide’s father had the experience of having to learn three languages (Czech, German, when the Nazis came in, and Russian, at the conclusion of WWII). His name was changed as well. Putin’s attempted conquest of the Ukraine has the Czechs shaking in their shoes at the prospect of Russia expanding its reach.

This is something the United States had never had to face and it really changes one’s worldview.

Currently Reading

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Expired Listings by D.M. Barr follows Dana Black, a smart but emotionally damaged realtor. Someone is murdering realtors from Dana’s realty and all the clues point to her as the murderer. She is afraid to admit where she actually was, since she uses the empty listings for meetings with her kinky lover Dare.

Dana was abandoned by her mother to the care of her grandmother as a young child and has never recovered from the trauma. She is jealous of her older sister, Melanie, who was raised by their mother and is also the big seller at the realty office.

As the police begin to focus on Dana, she hires a private detective to help clear her name and find the true murderer. She and Melanie are put in serious danger before the murderer is unmasked and Dana seems finally able to move on and heal.

I do not typically read erotica but here it serves the purpose of illuminating Dana’s emotional damage and the scars left by a lifetime of abandonment. The characters are believable and I found myself thoroughly engaged in Dana’s life.

Highly Recommended.

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While I was at Malice Domestic, I picked up several books to read. I think I spent way more than I made by selling my books. Anyway, this was one.

I sat next to this author at the book signing and bought his book. Kuehn is a practicing archaeologist so he knows of what he speaks.

Jack Caine is conducting a field school, where students help excavate a site. In this case, a Native American village. A few years previously, another professor, Jacklyn Wardell, had died under mysterious circumstances. Problems at the dig arise; trespassers, a break-in at the lab, and more. When Jake finds Wardell’s Journal, he is drawn even deeper into the mystery of her death.

The local sheriff admits he was never satisfied by the accidental ruling. Then a local photographer who’d taken many photos of the previous dig is found murdered. It’s up to Jack to figure out the mystery and identify the murderer.

During the first half of the book, the murder mystery takes a back seat to the archaeological details. If the reader is interested in archaeology, which I am, this is fascinating. If not, I think the reader will find it slow-moving. The book picks up in the second half, when the mystery moves front and center and Jack begins to seriously investigate. Recommended, with that caveat.

Turkey – Canakkale

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Pop Quiz: how do you pronounce the above name?

Because Turkey uses the Latin alphabet instead of the cursive Arabic script, it seems as though we should know how to pronounce it. But the Turkish language has some marks on the letters that change the pronunciation. So, the above is pronounced Cha -Knock-lee.

This is the site of Troy, the city featured in the Iliad. To me, the amazing thing about the ruins is the many strata of constant human habitation going all the way back to the Neolithic. Access to water, a fertile plain and elevation, from which to see approaching people, were all necessary features.

Troy was only one of the many communities.

When one walks through the ruins, the different levels are very apparent, although there is some mixing. Sometimes the floors fell through into the lower level. Also, the walls show that newer groups built on the walls and other structures that came before.

The movie, Troy, with Brad Pitt was filmed here in 2003. There are two horses, one in front of the site, and one in town that was gifted by the movie crew. Of the two, the second is the most believable.

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The Turnbull Murders is the second in R.J. Koreto’s Wren Fontaine series. Wren has taken a job renovating a mansion on an island in the New York Harbor. The house has been bought by a movie star and he and his entourage are filming on the island as Wren works. Very soon after Nicky Tallon, Saffron, Thalia and all the other actors arrive, a PR rep Beebee is found dead. The coffee was poisoned by fentanyl and because it was Saffron’s drink, the police assume she was the target.

Several people within the entourage have secrets. Wren and Hadley, who is catering the food for the movie people, painstakingly uncover the secrets at the same time they delve into the secrets of the house. The story behind it is that Captain Turnbull, who built it, murdered a male servant for developing a relationship with his sister and then escaped to sea. Needless to say, the reality was a lot more complicated.

A second murder occurs and then a third is attempted. But Wren, despite her often repeated statement that she is not good with people, figures everything out.

I read the first book and I think this second one is the better story. But both are interesting and I plan to read the third. The use of an architect as the amateur detective is unusual and Wren’s unraveling the mysteries based on patterns connected to the houses is interesting. Recommended.

Ephesus, Turkey

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Turkey, or Turkiye as they prefer, surprised me in many ways. One of the first surprises was the prevalence of Virgin Mary, or Mother Mary – their name – statues. Turkey is a Moslem country, after all, although very secular. Mary, the story goes, moved with St, John to Turkey after the crucifixion and lived there. No one knows exactly where. But she and St. John proselytized from Turkey. We also saw the ruins of the church where he was buried. The Pope moved the body to the Vatican in the sixties.

Moving to yet another faith, we saw the last remaining pillar for the Temple of Artemis. Some of the posts were used in the Sofia Hagida in Istanbul. The removal of previously used stones, pillars, murals, pretty much anything you can name, and put into new structures has a long and ancient history.

Turkey, all of the Mediterranean countries, are really at the crossroads of civilization and groups have swept over these areas over and over and over. More about Turkiye next post.