This past week I read Dachshund Through the Snow by David Rosenfelt. I love these books. They are funny and with good mysteries as well.
In this one, Andy Carpenter is persuaded by his wife and by a Christmas wish from a young boy, to bring his father home. But he doesn’t want to be found. He knows he is suspected of a murder that happened long ago, a murder he assures Carpenter he didn’t commit.
As he investigates, Carpenter begins to believe the young man is telling the truth. Especially after several people assigned to watch Carpenter are murdered. Then another man who was asking questions.
Sure enough, the case is way more complicated than it first appears. But Andy pursues it to the end and justice is served.
In 1621, the Governor of Plymouth Colony wrote a letter in hopes of attracting more colonists. In it, he described a three-day feast shared by the Plymouth settlers and the local tribe. The governor sent out four men who provided a variety of fowls, sufficient to feed the colony for a week, while tribal hunters killed five deer. In the 19th century, this event became associated with the idea of a Thanksgiving feast. Thanksgiving is traditionally associated with New England and the Pilgrims, but Jamestown, Virginia and other locations have also been suggested as the the places for the first In New England, I expect seafood would have been on the menu.
Although Thanksgiving was not made a National Holiday until 1863 (by Abraham Lincoln), it was celebrated prior to that date. A novel published in 1826, Northwood, a tale of New England, discusses Thanksgiving with many of the foods that are traditional and still eaten today.
Many of the dishes in a traditional Thanksgiving dinner are foods native to the Americas. The turkey (although having eaten a wild chicken I’m sure the turkeys were much different from our own), potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, squash (including pumpkin) green beans and cranberries. Besides tradition, many of these foods are eaten because they are affordable. (Although I regularly hear on the news how much the cost of turkey has risen from year to year.)
However, Will Rees and his family would not have had the lavish feast we think of when we think of Thanksgiving. The huge feasts were a feature that came in during the nineteenth century. And, as I mentioned, seafood would play a large part in their meals, as it still does in New England.
Vera Wong runs a failing tea shop in Chinatown with only one regular customer. Then, one morning, she discovers a dead body lying on the first floor. The police come and are not grateful she tried to help by drawing an outline around the body with a Sharpie!
Other people arrive to view the location with the body, all, it turns out, with a connection to the dead man. And all, Vera decides, suspects in his murder. An artist, an app created, the dead mans’s wife and his brother.
But the mystery unreels differently than Vera, or the reader, expects.
The murderer is someone totally unexpected. Well plotted, with interesting characters (especially Vera!) and a heart warming conclusion. Highly recommended!
The Peculiar Garden of Harriet Hunt is almost uncategorizable.
After a lifetime of emotional abuse levied upon Harriet by her father, he disappears. She is left alone in a shadowy house with am amazing garden, Harriet’s refuge. The roses, the ivy respond to her, comforting her.
Then Inspector Stokes arrives to question her. He clearly suspects her of murdering her father and besides, she is not a proper lady. To escape Stokes, Harriet marries Mr. Comstock – and jumps from the frying pan into the fire.
A plot against Harriet mixes with a little magic. Recommended.
Spencer Quinn writes mysteries involving dogs and is probably most famous for his Chet and Bernie series.
The Right Side is a standalone. We first meet LeAnn at Walter Reed, recovering from injuries sustained in Afghanistan. She lost her eye and her memory is patchy at best. (She is the definition of the unreliable narrator.) And she is very very angry, so angry every comment sets her off. She is far too angry to let anyone help her. One day she gathers up her things and walks out of the hospital.
She purchases a car and travels west, finally coming to rest in a small town. A large stray dog literally saves her life. LeAnn is not a dog person but she can’t bear to give up the dog to a shelter.
Two parallel stories run side by side. First, her experiences in Afghanistan, told mostly in flashbacks. Second, the disappearance of Mia, daughter of Marci, a fellow injured vet LeAnn meets in Walter Reed.
I did not care for this book. Significantly more than half is taken up with LeAnn’s physical and mental struggles. She does not meet the dog until probably 70% through. I also would not have described this book as a mystery since only the final quarter has any mystery about it. Although LeAnn does not know what really happened the day of her injury, her commanding officer does. He explains it, and, sure enough, that was it. Plus, the cause of the disappearance of Mia is obvious to the reader well before it is to LeAnn.
The two books I read this past week, to my surprise, addressed the same topic, – the collapse of democracy – but the presentation couldn’t be more different.
In Enemies Domestic, by John Dedakis, the United States government is threatened from within.
Lark Chadwick, newly pregnant, is chosen by POTUS to serve as liasion with the press. An obnoxious reporter, discovering Lark’s pregnancy, asks if she will have an abortion and then spins her “I don’t know” into yes. Lark is subsequently abducted by two people who plan to hold her until the birth of the baby. Lark escapes, the two are arrested, but the situation worsens. The President is arrested for treason.
Dedakis takes current events and draws them out into a logical, although somewhat implausible scenario. A terrifying dystopian mystery. Recommended.
The second book I read, And Intrigue of Witches, follows Sydney Taylor, a black woman with a mane of bright red hair.
Suddenly laid off from her D.C. job, she goes home to Robbinsville, only to be offered a job searching for an artifact. Part Treasure Hunt (think National Treasure with Nicholas Cage), part historical fiction, part fantasy, the story veers into a hundred years battle between good and evil. The Daughters of Hathor are witches, and the rightful rulers. When the Opposition is in power, dictatorship, cruelty, and violence are the result.
Magic, time travel, and of course murder are all mixed together in a novel that resists classification. The inventiveness behind the tale is breath taking. But this story will not be for everyone.
Last week I read two of the books I picked up at the Suffolk Author Festival.
Orphans Amelia and Jonah Mathews have parlayed her modest psychic talent into a comfortable life. But a head injury increases that talent far more than she is prepared for. When she wakes from her coma, and sees a ghost for the first time, her reaction lands her in the notorious insane asylum Blackwell’s Island.
While Jonah searches for his sister, Amelia attempts to survive. Finding an ally in new doctor, Andrew Cavanaugh, they discover a terrible murder for hire conspiracy.
Highly Recommended. I hope Murphy continues this series. The characters are appealing and the story is un-put-downable.
The Bronze Compass begins with a bang as Lily, an American spy in Nazi Germany, watches as her contact commits suicide rather than be taken by the Gestapo.
A harrowing flight, with no food or resources, through Germany to safety behind the American lines ensues. Lily does find some help along the way, particularly from a stray horse, but her success rests primarily on her own resourcefulness.
This was an exciting suspense/spy novel. My only criticism is that Butler devotes several chapters at the end to wrapping up all the story threads. These final chapters dilute the excitement of the bulk of the story, and could probably and more effectively been condensed into an epilogue.
Revenge in Rubies is the second in the Harriet Gordon Mysteries.
When the young wife of a British officer is murdered in her bedroom, the military closes ranks to keep Inspector Curran out. Harriet realizes her friendship with the victim’s sister-in-law might prove useful and she calls upon the bereaved family to offer comfort. Other murders quickly follow and both Harriet and Curran are soon in the killer’s sights.
Both of them must deal with their own demons before they can solve this mystery.
Another winner from A. M. Stuart. I love this series. Highly recommended.
I also read Dance of Bones by J. A. Jance.
Big Bad John Lassiter is convicted of the murder of his best friend and partner Amos Warren and sent to prison. Thirty years later his daughter, who he has never met, wants the case reopened. Brandon Walker is reluctant but agrees to look into it and finds that there is more than a reasonable doubt that Lassiter is innocent.
A parallel story involving Lani, Walker’s adopted daughter, intersperses the main story. The stories and rites of the Tohono O’odham tribe are a big part of this half of the novel.
The two stories meet, separate, meet separate again and again, finally joining for a blowout ending.
This is the first that draw J.P. Beaumont and Brandon Walker together in one book, which is interesting.
Recommended with reservations. There are a lot of characters. And, with the tribal stories, and the two halves of the mystery all happening at the same time, it starts to get a little confusing. But there is no doubt there is a lot going on and it keeps a reader’s interest.
Upcoming event: Pane Discussion at the Poughkeepsie Public Library
This past week I read one book, Shutter, by Ramona Emerson.
This was very good, but also rather creepy.
Rita Todacheene is a Navaho but also a forensic photographer working for the Albuquerque Police Force. She is unusual in that the Navaho are forbidden to interact with the dead in case they invite in witches.
But Rita sees ghosts. In some cases, the ghosts lead her to the person who murdered them. Rita does not dare tell people she sees ghosts; the usual response is that she is hallucinating. And for many years, she is able to ignore the ghosts.
But at a particularly grisly accident scene, the ghost of a young woman, Erma, will not allow Rita to turn away. Instead, the ghost pursues Rita, pestering her to investigate the so-called suicide when Erma knows she was murdered.
Creepy but unputdownable. For mystery readers who enjoy a touch of the supernatural.
The first is by Victoria Thompson. She previously wrote the Gaslight mysteries. City of Lies is roughly the same period but very different.
Elizabeth is a grifter, a con woman, now going by the name Betty Perkins. When the current con. goes badly, she has to run for her life. Chased by two heavies, she takes refuge in a protest by a band of suffragists. They are quickly arrested and Elizabeth finds herself in a workhouse in Virginia. All of the woman embark on a hunger strike, including Elizabeth. She is greatly changed by her experience and her growing connection to Mrs. Bates and another young woman.
But the mark is still waiting for her to appear so that he can wreak his vengeance.
Highly Recommended.
The second book is a collection of short stories by Elly Griffiths.
The stories include some with Ruth Galloway and Max Mephisto, but others are cozies and a few are barely mysteries at all. But they are all captivating and show Griffiths is a master of the short story as well as the novel. Highly recommended.
Island of the Mad by Laurie R. King is number fifteen in her long running and popular Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes mystery series. In this outing, Mary is asked by a school friend to find her aunt Vivian. Vivian has spent many years in Bedlam. When Mary and her friend pay a visit to Bedlam and visit Vivian, she seems happy and sane. She says, to Mary’s surprise, that she’s ‘safe’ in Bedlam.
But on a visit to her family, she disappears.
Mary, after visiting the family home and meeting the Lord of the Manor, that there is something else going on. Mary writes to her husband, Sherlock. He joins her in her search for Vivian.
To glean what information she can. Mary disguises herself and allows herself to be confined to Bedlam.
Another captivating and complicated mystery. Highly Recommended.
