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9798987556979
| B0DMST6FZM
| 4.61
| 211
| unknown
| Nov 11, 2024
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really liked it
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The latest installment of the author's Barks and Beans Cafe' mystery series has much the same quality and characteristics of its predecessors; the ser
The latest installment of the author's Barks and Beans Cafe' mystery series has much the same quality and characteristics of its predecessors; the series is very consistent in those respects. This one is set against the backdrop of a Renaissance Faire at Lewisburg's fairgrounds (which the immediately preceding book mentions will take place "next weekend," so not much time has elapsed between the two). Series protagonist Macy and her brother have set up a stand selling their cafe's characteristic coffee, lattes, sandwiches and pastries; and fairgoers are hoping for a medieval-themed good time. But readers familiar with Lewisburg's astronomical murder rate (only in the series, though, not in real life! :-) ) won't be terribly surprised to find that the Grim Reaper is about to make an unannounced visit. That will put Macy into her characteristic snooping mode, motivated by more than her usual ill-advised nosiness (though that's a factor too); a Barks and Beans employee is on the police detective's suspect list. Like all of the series novels, this one is consciously "cozy," tailored to appeal particularly to fans of that specific strand of the mystery genre. It's also the work of an evangelical author, with Christian main characters and no objectional language, grisly violence or sexual content; while there's no stress on the character's spiritual lives or religious beliefs, the series is definitely Christian-friendly. It boasts a well-constructed, plausible mystery (I suspected the culprit from early on, but wasn't absolutely sure until the big reveal), red herrings, concealed identity, good use of small-town atmosphere and, for series fans, catch-up time with old friends, both two-legged and four-legged. (As I've noted in earlier reviews, this is a series that should be read in order, so this isn't the optimum place to start it.) We'll also have a significant development in Macy's private life, but no spoilers here! My wife Barb and I read this together, as we have all of the officially-numbered earlier installments; she was thoroughly pleased with it (by her own statement, she'd give it five stars, but I think that's on Amazon's scale), and I'm sure the rest of the fans will be as well. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 13, 2025
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Aug 2025
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Jul 13, 2025
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Paperback
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1335597948
| 9781335597946
| 1335597948
| 4.53
| 137
| unknown
| Feb 20, 2024
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liked it
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Love Inspired is the Christian fiction branch of the Harlequin paperback romance empire; Love Inspired Suspense is a sub-imprint that specializes in r
Love Inspired is the Christian fiction branch of the Harlequin paperback romance empire; Love Inspired Suspense is a sub-imprint that specializes in romantic suspense/mystery, often with characters in law enforcement-related occupations. We've all seen many of these books on sale in most venues that carry mass-market paperbacks. Given the huge volume at which these are churned out, one can guess that the house authors produce them under tight deadlines that allow little time for planning or polishing them (Jodie Bailey, the author here, has 111 distinct works listed on Goodreads, apparently all under the Love Inspired label; that statistic is probably indicative), and under market-driven guidelines that tend to give the resultant books a formulaic quality. Love Inspired would also conform to ECPA guidelines, which prohibit bad language, sexual content and gory violence (none of which, to be sure, are elements that I miss!). Preferring my reads to be less formulaic and mass-produced, I've personally never been interested in the imprint; but knowing that this particular book would appeal to my wife Barb, I gave it to her as a Christmas gift last year. At that time, I didn't plan to read it myself; but, as it turned out, we wound up reading it together. Going into it, my expectations weren't very high. Neither Goodreads nor the cover copy of this book give any hint that it is not a stand-alone (and the plot does have a resolution). But I guessed from the detailed references to past experiences shared by the two protagonists, and to the back stories of their mostly off-stage colleagues, that all of these characters had appeared in other books by Bailey, and that two married couples in the broader team found their way to each other in prior books. The author's “Dear Reader” afterword confirmed this; her novels Captured at Christmas and Deadly Vengeance introduce Phillip Campbell and Thalia Renner as supporting characters. Here, they take center stage. As the (somewhat clunky –and that's not unusual for this imprint) title indicates at the outset, our setting is Colorado, at Rocky Mountain Summit, a pricey resort where, several times each year, an adoption agency, Stardust Adoptions, hosts week-long retreats for would-be adoptive couples, where they can bond with other couples and meet agency counselors who can connect them with birth mothers. Over time, however, several couples who put up thousands of dollars for ostensible “birth mother's” expenses have been disappointed, when they're told she's changed her mind and will keep the baby. Inquiring minds in law enforcement have begun to suspect that some of these women were never really pregnant. One or both spouses in some of the disappointed couples have been enlisted in the military (Stardust pays the resort expenses for two military couples at each retreat, in what they bill as a patriotic public service.) That piques the interest of certain military investigative types. Army career soldiers Phillip and Thalia are partnered as undercover investigators for “Overwatch,” which is apparently a fictional branch of the U.S. Army's C.I.D. (or perhaps a fictional substitute for it). They're close friends as well as co-workers, both competent professionals who've been through a lot together already, work well together, and have each other's backs. Here, they're posing as a married couple who want to adopt, and tasked with ferreting out the truth about whether or not the entrepreneurial couple who run Stardust really are swindling some of their clients. (Thalia is herself an adoptee; she was born in Moldova to parents she doesn't remember, and adopted by a loving American family when she was three.) Of course, acting like a loving couple is strictly a pretense (or is it....?). The novel tag-teams the third-person perspectives of both protagonists, and spans just two event-packed days. At 215 pages, it's a fairly quick read. Bailey's writing style is clear and professional, neither minimalist nor ornately detailed. IMO, the basic premise here is implausible; it's not likely that a real-life adoption agency would feel any need for such retreats, or that a military investigative agency would concern itself with a possible crime committed by civilians, even if some of the victims happen to be military families. The way that the plot is spun off continues the implausibility. Some of the activities of the baddies here are pointless at best and counter-productive at worst; the level of skullduggery going on isn't believable, and there are other credibility issues. For a pair of ace investigators, our H/h here struck me as bumbling and ineffective, and at times withhold information from each other in a way that seems unprofessional; and the solution is dropped into their laps at the tales' climax and its aftermath, without them actually nosing it out at all. (Except that the “solution” doesn't make sense of a couple of the incidents that preceded it; but that difficulty is just glossed over.) Bailey also doesn't evoke much of a sense of place. She's better at creating characters than at plotting. Both Phil and Thalia are three-dimensional, well-developed personalities who were, for me, easy to like and root for. Their psychological baggage was understandable, and the events furnished a catalyst for working through some of it. Romantic attraction (albeit unrecognized for what it is) has grown naturally between them in the fertile soil of close association, in stressful settings which have revealed each other's mettle and engendered mutual respect and trust. It feels real, as does their fear of changing an already familiar and strong friend dynamic to something new for both, and their doubts about how much the fake relationship is messing with their perceptions. As a Christian writer, Bailey is interested in their spiritual lives, and also handles that aspect naturally, without Bible quoting and theological discussions. (Phil's a Christian believer; Thalia isn't, being unsure that the idea of Divine love squares with the reality of being abandoned by her birth parents. But for both of them, this op will greatly stimulate their prayer life....) I also give the author credit for a very sensitive handling of a secondary character's experience of multiple miscarriages. Bailey's good at writing dialogues, and that one was particularly moving. Phil and Thalia (who has competed in MMA bouts on one of her undercover assignments) do have action-hero/heroine chops. Both pack guns, though when Chapter One opens en media res, with Thalia being attacked on a mountain trail, while on an early morning exercise run, by a musclebound thug with a silenced pistol, she's left hers back in the resort room. However, she doesn't need it to leave him greatly regretting that he tangled with her. (That's not a spoiler; if she got killed in the first chapter, this would be an awfully short book!) She actually has more combat training than Phil does, though in the climactic show-down here, he's the one who actually gets to shine. All of that said, though, action is a very minor part of this book, with physical violence or attempted violence only occurring rarely, and taking little time when it does; Thalia never engages in actual combat after the first chapter. It's no great surprise that Barb liked this better than I did (when we discussed it after finishing the read, she noted that her rating would be five stars –and she does understand Goodread's rating scale.) But while my reaction was less adulatory, and I'm not “inspired” (pun not intended, but it came naturally) to seek out more books in the imprint, this one was better written than I'd expected, and I did mildly like it. It won't ever be confused with great literature; but it does provide some wholesome entertainment. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 13, 2025
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May 20, 2025
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Apr 13, 2025
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Mass Market Paperback
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B09C3TM7C1
| 4.09
| 11
| 1932
| Jan 01, 1932
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really liked it
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Though he also wrote a good deal of historical fiction, Henry Christopher Bailey (1878-1961) was one of the more popular British writers of mysteries
Though he also wrote a good deal of historical fiction, Henry Christopher Bailey (1878-1961) was one of the more popular British writers of mysteries in the genre's "Golden Age" between the World Wars, and even afterwards. (He retired from writing in 1950.) Since his death, he's been largely --and unjustly, IMO-- forgotten by genre fans. (One Goodreads reviewer attributed this eclipse in popularity, at least in part, to unspecified issues with his literary estate, which hindered reprinting of his work; but I don't know much about that.) His most popular series sleuth was Reginald "Reggie" Fortune, who appears in a number of short stories (published, during Bailey's lifetime, in a dozen partial collections, of which this is one), beginning in 1920, as well as nine novels. This is the only one of the author's books I've read, and until very recently his name wasn't on my radar. It turns out, however, that I read at least the lead story here, "The Greek Play," as a tween kid. I say "at least," because I'm not sure if I read the entire book, for which I'd forgotten author/title information. Late last year, I tracked it down with the aid of the helpful Goodreads group What's the Name of that Book???, but the process took years because my only memories of it were of that first story, and I misremembered that as a novel. On the reread, I found that I could remember a number of lines of dialogue from that selection, but nothing of any of the others. That leads me to suspect that I quit reading on my original read after the first story. If that's the case, it would have been because Bailey's prose style proved too confusing and off-putting for my pre-teen self. It's very English, with a lot of period British slang, a considerable amount of very dry and cynical humor that would have been over my head at the time, and a seasoning of extreme tongue-in-cheek statements in dialogue that aren't intended to be taken literally. Fortunately, in the intervening 60 or so years, my ability to understand this kind of thing has vastly improved. :-) This book provides eight stories, mostly about 40 pages long, and which I'd guess are probably fairly representative of the Fortune corpus. A very round and well-realized character, Reggie's a medically-qualified surgeon (he's addressed as Mr. rather than Dr. in keeping with traditional British usage; originally, surgeons in England did not generally have M.D degrees). In the earliest stories, he filled in some in his father's medical practice; but by the time the stories here were written, his income is mainly from consulting for Scotland Yard on criminal cases, and he's acquired quite a reputation in that field, due to being very observant and thorough, scrupulously logical-minded, and very good at reading people. Crime fighting wasn't his choice for a specialization (his first love is medical research); but he's good at it, and has a deep sympathy for the victimized and downtrodden and a principled desire to see justice done. Like Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey, to whom he's been compared (though he's much less athletic, and part of the monied commoner gentry rather than the aristocracy), he's also well-read, has some knowledge of a wide variety of subjects, an interest in mental challenges, and an appreciation for creature comforts. (Both men are also refreshingly free of class snobbery, and not very sympathetic to snobs.) He also came across to me as sort of a fictional version of Dr. Joseph Bell, one of Arthur Conan Doyle's real-life medical professors, who often assisted the police, and served as a model for Sherlock Holmes. Of the eight stories here, six involve murders or attempted murder. All of the mysteries are challenging and tightly constructed, with a good deal of imaginative variety. Most of them feature the fictional head of Scotland Yard's Criminal Investigation division, Sidney Lomas, and his right-hand man, Detective Superintendent Bell, who serve as foils for the protagonist; two stories also let us get to know Reggie's much-loved wife Joan, and another features his (also smart) sister, who's married to a pompous Anglican bishop. These continuing characters were undoubtedly introduced in earlier collections; all of them, and the various characters unique to each story, are drawn as vividly as the short format allows. (Unlike some male writers of his day, Bailey doesn't depict his female characters as ineffectual morons; several are intelligent, capable women who play real roles in the stories.) England is the setting for seven of the stories. To consider some of the individual stories, "The Mountain Meadow" is the one story set in rural France, where the Fortunes are vacationing (but crime doesn't necessarily take vacations). "The Sported Oak" is set in the milieu of British higher education, at fictional "Oxbridge Univ." (its rival school is "Camford Univ;" anyone familiar with England's academia will recognize the real-life analogues :-) ). Reggie's love for animals is on particular display in "The Little Dog," in which the title four-legged character will be instrumental in unmasking a culprit. My only criticisms of "The Walrus Ivory" are that I don't think a visual examination would allow one to distinguish walrus ivory from, say, elephant ivory; and having actually seen persons of Slavic ethnicity in real life and on TV, I'm pretty sure that they can't be distinguished from Anglo-Saxons by their facial features. (One villainess in that story also uses the n-word in a conversation, but Reggie doesn't.) But those are minor quibbles. I didn't really have a favorite story as such; they were all really well done, and a pleasure to read. It's a pity the old PBS Mystery! series never adapted any of these (or any other) of the Fortune stories, an omission possibly related to the above-mentioned problems with Bailey's literary estate. Even now, if any TV or movie producers would produce a quality adaptation, I'd definitely watch it if I had a chance to! And while I don't plan to follow the series at this time, if I found a good second-hand copy of any of the other Fortune books, I'd snap it up. ...more |
Notes are private!
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2
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Dec 28, 2024
not set
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Jan 11, 2025
not set
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Oct 30, 2024
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Hardcover
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B0BPQ8KHZR
| 4.63
| 290
| unknown
| Dec 11, 2023
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really liked it
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Given that this book is actually the ninth one in the series that I've read and reviewed (one of the earlier ones is an e-novella that stands outside
Given that this book is actually the ninth one in the series that I've read and reviewed (one of the earlier ones is an e-novella that stands outside the series numbering), and that the author's style and plot structures are very consistent throughout the series, readers who may have followed my reviews of the preceding installments won't find radical departures in this one; my general comments on the older ones largely apply here as well. For series fans, it has the appeal of another visit to old and appreciated friends. (As with all of the earlier paperback installments, this is one I read aloud to my wife Barb; and this could fairly be said to be a favorite mystery series of hers.) Since the events of the preceding book, Roast Date, nearly six months have elapsed. We're now at the beginning of the following June. When our story opens, series protagonist Macy Hatfield and her older brother Bo are spending their morning on a home and garden tour sponsored by the town's Garden Club, where visitors can enjoy the ornamental gardens of homes (usually occupied by the wealthier residents) that have them, and sometimes even go inside residences that have architectural or historical interest. One house, recently purchased by Hollywood superstar Cody Franklin, features an ornamental shade garden in its back yard, which honors the grave of a Confederate soldier hastily buried after the 1862 Battle of Lewisburg. (Gilbert makes good use of the historical background of the battle, which is described in much more detail on Wikipedia, here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_... .) The siblings are interested; but on this particular morning, it turns out that the graveside flower bed holds more than pretty blooms.... This particular outing will feature murder, family secrets, hidden letters, the dark tentacles of southern West Virginia's drug culture, and numerous intriguing and well-drawn characters (some of them with things to hide). Will Macy crack the case by a combination of skilled detective work, faultless deduction taking shape in her little grey cells, and/or brilliant flashes of intuition? And will she subdue the malefactor or malefactors, without breaking a sweat, using her formidable combat skills? Well ...if you expect anything remotely like that, you've never actually met Macy. :-) But you can bet your bottom dollar that she will try to play detective, with more enthusiasm than wisdom, and that the case will get itself solved. (The solution proved to be a total surprise to me; this was actually quite a well-constructed mystery, with multiple suspects.) And knowing that there will be two more novels in the series, it's also a safe bet that our heroine will return in good shape for another bout of detective fever. With the exception of the e-novella, the books in this series need to be read in order; so this one is not the place to start. But it will totally please series fans when they get around to it in its order! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 05, 2024
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Oct 10, 2024
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Jul 27, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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B09Z8NYHX9
| 4.65
| 376
| unknown
| Dec 20, 2022
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really liked it
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In terms of setting, continuing characters, basic ethos and style, this seventh episode (it's actually the eighth altogether, but the Kindle-only nove
In terms of setting, continuing characters, basic ethos and style, this seventh episode (it's actually the eighth altogether, but the Kindle-only novella House Blend doesn't officially have a series number) in my Goodreads friend Heather Day Gilbert's Barks and Beans Cafe' mystery series is very much of a piece with the preceding ones. Friends and others who follow my reviews have read the eight previous ones of the earlier books, so lengthy repetition of the series basics probably isn't necessary. And presumably readers simply checking out this book are doing so because they've read the preceding ones (since for the most part these books need to be read in order; there are progressive developments in circumstances and relationships), and in that case are also familiar with the basics. Our first-person, past-tense narrator is again likable and down-home series protagonist Macy Hatfield (calling her a series sleuth would be crediting her with more ability than she possesses --though, as was said of the heroine of another mystery series my wife and I both liked, she does tend to "attract corpses"). This outing takes place about a month after the previous book, set around Thanksgiving. It's now close to Christmas. Macy's elderly neighbor Vera (who by now is another old friend for series readers) has prevailed on our girl to agree to attend the December meeting of the book club Vera hosts in her home. Vanity Fair is the book up for the discussion, to be led by Lewisburg's mayor (who's a retired English teacher), and Macy will be on the program to plug the Barks and Beans Cafe' and its unique features. (Book discussion doesn't play a big role in the plot, but it's clear the author has actually read Vanity Fair, rather than just dropping the name.) But this club meeting won't be as festive as Vera would like, since the holiday spirit is about to be dampened by murder.... Before the last page is turned, readers will get a glimpse at the epic-scaled illicit drug problem in West Virginia, and a bit of a window into the state's sometimes vicious local politics. We'll also be treated to not just one, but two, major developments in the personal life of Macy's big brother Boaz "Bo" Hatfield (but you won't hear any spoilers from me!). I was genuinely surprised by the revelation of the killer here; and I would also say that the resolution of the mystery was darker and more thought-provoking than is typical of this series. But I'd still recommend it as relatively light entertainment, particularly tailored to the tastes of "cozy" fans, and as a pretty quick read. (Even reading it only during car trips, Barb and I finished it in less than a month!) ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 27, 2024
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Aug 24, 2024
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Jul 27, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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B0D64RDGRY
| 3.97
| 303
| Jul 23, 2024
| Jul 23, 2024
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liked it
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Heather Day Gilbert is both a valued Goodreads friend of mine and a favorite mystery writer of both my wife's and mine (though I personally like her V
Heather Day Gilbert is both a valued Goodreads friend of mine and a favorite mystery writer of both my wife's and mine (though I personally like her Viking-themed historical fiction even better). Unlike some of her books that I've reviewed here, this one didn't come to me as a review copy; but she did graciously donate a copy to the Bluefield Univ. library, where I checked it out. It was another book that Barb and I read together. This particular book was a new departure for the author, in multiple respects. If I understand correctly, it's her first stand-alone novel, all her others being series fiction. And while she's a veteran writer of traditional mysteries and especially of those in the consciously "cozy" sub-genre, this represents her first foray as a writer into the "psychological suspense" branch of the genre, though she's always been fond of the latter as a reader. (Novels of this type, like all mysteries, feature skullduggery by a mysterious and unknown perpetrator(s); but they concentrate more on the inner psychological state of the usually female protagonist, and on developing a mounting sense of fear and suspense in the reader's mind, rather than on a reasoned effort to proactively solve the mystery by putting together clues, etc.) It's also her first novel to feature a main character who (like one of Heather's grown-up daughters) is neurodivergent, having a high-functioning form of autism, sometimes referred to as Asperger's syndrome. For me as a reader, the book was also a departure from previous experience, in both of the latter respects. Despite having at least one Goodreads friend who's autistic, I don't know anyone on the spectrum in my face-to-face world, and have never before read a book with an autistic protagonist, or even an autistic character. (And I've seen no more than one or two cinematic portrayals of this condition, either.) So for me this was an educational read in that respect. More importantly, even though I've been a mystery fan since childhood, I've never been very drawn to the "psychological suspense" category of the genre. Unless you count the many paperback Gothic mystery/romances I read as a kid who'd pretty much read anything (and my grandmother's bookshelves held tons of them!) as examples of the type, I've never read a book of that sort. (I don't put The Mysteries of Udolpho or Jane Eyre in this category.) Both the cover copy and one of the quoted blurbs from a fellow writer mention Alfred Hitchcock as a sort of prototype for this book; but I've only watched one of his films in my entire life, and don't make any effort to watch more. We begin with a three-paragraph Prologue, in first-person, present tense (Heather favors this style of writing, and continues it all through this book) that finds our narrator fleeing from life-threatening danger, through a woods in the midst of a pouring rain-and-lightning storm, with an injured foot. With our attention engaged, we then drop back a week in time, to the beginning of the first chapter, to gradually read how she got into that situation. This "she" is best-selling, and consequently very wealthy, action-adventure fiction author Alexandra ("Alex") Dubois, in her late 20s or early 30s, divorced for about a year from her gas-lighting and abusive ex, and currently in her home in rural Connecticut, at work on the concluding novel of her series about a highly-competent lady who's apparently sort of a modern distaff version of Indiana Jones. (The first part of the chapter is actually an italicized "excerpt" of what Alex is typing; and if her book were real, I'd definitely read it!) But she's soon interrupted by the receipt of a letter from an "Invested Reader," vaguely threatening dire consequences if Alex doesn't take his/her advice to resolve the series' romantic triangle a certain way. That advice is soon underscored by the next letter, thrown through a window wrapped around a brick. Not to worry, though --her editor owns a "cabin" (actually, more of a log luxury palace!) in the wilds of West Virginia, which the publishing house uses for writer's retreats; she can stay there, out of sight and under wraps, until the police find her "Invested Reader." Will this indeed be a heaven-sent haven of refuge? Well ...we'll have to see. With a main story line taking place in just a week, and at 222 pages, this is a very quick read, with a brisk pace, a naturally readily-flowing style, and a linear plot which tends to end chapters on cliff-hangers that draw the reader to keep turning pages. Alex is likable, and the quirks resulting from her autism are presented sympathetically, realistically (both of the author's older daughters gave input for the book), and respectfully. While she's not fiction's first autistic lead character, she's one of a very few trail-blazers, and I give the author full propers for the portrayal! ("...I hope that if you are on the spectrum," Heather writes in the short Author's Note that precedes the text, "you will feel a connection with her, and that you will feel seen. You are a wonderful creation, and you bring such richness to the world.") Like Agatha Christie, another author that Heather admires, she provides various red herrings to make solution of the mystery more difficult. I deduced the villain's identity in Chapter 7 (out of 27); but was able to only because I've read a LOT of mysteries, and know how they're typically structured. Barb, who's a more typical reader, was completely baffled. (But there was a secondary reveal, along with the big one, that took me totally by surprise, even though the author had hidden a couple of clues in plain sight!) On Goodreads scale, my rating is a positive one, reflecting that I liked the book. (It will be four stars on Amazon's scale, assuming that they post my review --since I didn't buy the book from them, as I learned earlier this evening from Google, that depends on how much I've spent on their site in the past year, and I don't keep track of that). Barb also liked it, but also not as well as other books by the author that we've read together. In her case, that's mostly because, as a neurotypical reader, she found some of Alex's thought processes at key points hard to relate to. That's the converse of an aspect that I saw as a strength of the book, and so wasn't so bothered by. Some readers might also dislike the short Epilogue, which is spoken/thought by a character who, as all readers know by that time, will die at the end of it. (Obviously, he/she can't subsequently write the Epilogue; but if we understand it as the character's dying thoughts that we're privy to, it works.) My own lower rating is a more a function of my different fictional tastes, which run more towards the traditional mystery, with a hero or heroine who solves it; I'm not the target audience for the damsel-in-distress "thriller," where the denouement has her picking her jaw up of the floor. (I gave it a try mostly just because I've liked the previous books I've read by the author.) However, this book can fairly be recommended to psychological thriller fans who are the target audience (with the caveat that I can't compare it to the work of other writers in the sub-genre). As a novel written by an evangelical author (though here she doesn't give any attention to her characters' beliefs about religion, if any), it can also be warranted as a clean read without bad language or sexual content, and it's free of any directly-described serious violence. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 14, 2025
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Apr 11, 2025
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Jun 05, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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B09G94PLYX
| 4.59
| 355
| May 24, 2022
| May 24, 2022
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really liked it
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This sixth installment of Gilbert's Barks and Beans Cafe' mystery series is set about a month after the events of the previous one, Trouble Brewing; t
This sixth installment of Gilbert's Barks and Beans Cafe' mystery series is set about a month after the events of the previous one, Trouble Brewing; that one took place around Halloween, and this one during the week of Thanksgiving. (It's the same year, since protagonist Macy still refers to herself as 38 years old.) Like the previous entries in the series, it takes place in the real-life small town of Lewisburg, West Virginia, and makes use of real-life features of that setting. In this case, the author makes use of the fact that the mountainous topography of the area (like that of Appalachia in general) is fissured by numerous deep limestone caves, which are often tourist attractions. The one which figures prominently here isn't named, but is probably modeled on Lewisburg's Lost World Caverns (https://www.lostworldcaverns.com/ ). When our story opens, Macy learns that her boyfriend, FBI agent Titan McCoy, will be able to come into town for the week of the holiday. Yielding to her brother Bo's suggestion, she agrees to take Titan for a tour of the local caverns, though contrary to the cover copy (which the Goodreads description reproduces) it's not one of her 'favorite haunts;" she hasn't cared much for the place since, as a child, she nearly fell over a steep drop when she slipped on a slick underground trail. Despite that bad memory, she and her beau are enjoying the experience well enough --until (in Chapter 2) the lights inexplicably go out, and a couple of screams pierce the darkness. We're soon dealing with an apparent accident --or was it an accident?-- a missing person/corpse, and before long a definite murder mystery. (If this series were to be believed, for such a small place, Lewisburg's murder rate ought to be of serious concern to the DOJ's crime statisticians. :-) ) As usual, Macy's detective fever will find her snooping (with more zeal and naivety than finesse) into a tangle of not-very-loving family ties, toxic "friendships" and interlocking romantic triangles, with some illegal gambling thrown into the mix, among the town's monied set. (Since Barks and Beans' male barista, continuing character Milo, has wealthy parents and moves in those circles when he wants to, he gets featured here a bit more than usual.) Personally, my main criticisms of this book are twofold. First, as isn't uncommon in this series, the solution is arrived at through the killer's helpful, "Now that I have you at my mercy, since you're going to die anyway, I'll first obligingly explain the whole crime to you" trope (okay, that's not an exact quote :-) ). I've never been a real fan of that particular device. Also, I thought the motives behind two of the key mysteries of the plot were hard to credit; IMO, the decisions of both the two characters involved were too drastic under the circumstances, and were either unnecessary for their own interests or actually contrary to the latter. But while those are issues for me, they won't be with all readers. Although I sometimes finger the culprit in mysteries before the big reveal, I didn't do so for sure here (although I did divine the fact that one character had to be more involved in one aspect of the plotting here than he/she was wanting to shout from the housetops!). Our continuing characters, by now, are all old friends, the ambiance of modern small-town Appalachia is evoked realistically, and the book has a built-in attraction for dog-loving readers in particular. Like all the previous paperback entries of the series, I read this one aloud to my wife (who's not on Goodreads). She stated that she would give this one four stars; though she didn't like it as well as some of its predecessors, because she thought Macy's recklessness in self-endangerment here was worse than usual. My own perception was that this book wasn't that much of an outlier in this respect; Macy's likely to wind up in damsel-in-distress mode, but for her that's fairly characteristic. :-) Since the series is consciously written for "cozy" fans, those who actually prefer mysteries in that mode even over other traditional mysteries that incorporate less "cozy" formulaic characteristics, Barb is more the target audience for it than I am (though, for the record, I also like both this book and the series overall). So I went with her rating, to more fairly represent its merits in the context of the author's intention. ...more |
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Feb 18, 2024
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Mar 27, 2024
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Dec 03, 2023
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B0CK6TXQK7
| 4.42
| 73
| unknown
| Sep 30, 2023
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liked it
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Note, Oct. 11, 2023: I'm just adding a hasty note to this review to state that I read it in electronic format, as an ARC I was given earlier this year
Note, Oct. 11, 2023: I'm just adding a hasty note to this review to state that I read it in electronic format, as an ARC I was given earlier this year by the author, who's a valued Goodreads friend. No promise of a positive review was asked for, or given! House Blend is a short novella in Heather Day Gilbert's Barks and Beans “cozy” mystery series, set in present-day Lewisburg, West Virginia and featuring amateur sleuth (and first-person narrator) Macy Hatfield. Macy and her slightly older brother Bo operate a “petting cafe,” a coffee shop with an adjacent area where customers can interact with shelter dogs (with a view to encouraging adoptions). This particular entry takes place a couple of years after the series opener, No Filter (since there Macy's about 37, and here she turned 39 a few days before the tale opens), and would probably appeal most to people who've already read the earlier book. But it stands outside of the series numbering, so doesn't have to be read in any particular sequence as compared to the later books. It could even, possibly, serve as a sort of appetizer for the main series for “cozy” fans who are new to it (though I think the first book would be a more effective and appealing introduction). This volume does have basic information as to a couple of romantic attachments that have developed in the intervening years since the series opener –but these are really not “spoilers,” since most readers of the latter book will already have placed their bets on both pairs to become dating couples. :-) Like most book titles in this series, this one takes a coffee-shop term and connects it to a element in the mystery. The connection here is the word “house.” Harper Pine is a “house flipper,” that is, someone who buys older houses which could benefit from a makeover, has them renovated, and sells them at a profit. Normally she lives in neighboring Virginia; but the house she's currently working with is in Lewisburg, and during her time there she's become a Barks and Beans regular. Unfortunately, the house in question proved to contain a shallowly-buried skeleton with a bashed-in skull in its basement. Back in 1989, Lewisburg gossip was set agog over the disappearance of a young, childless married woman named Delta Buckner. Local police investigated it at the time, but no leads were found; and the intervening 30+ years have left the case very cold and general interest waned to the vanishing point. In the first chapter, though, we learn that the bones have been identified as Delta's, so the missing person case is now a homicide case. Harper's concerned that an association with an unsolved murder will hurt the sales appeal of the house. She strikes up a friendship with Macy, also in the first chapter, and our heroine, being native to the community --and also being, as most readers will recognize (maybe with rolled eyes!) afflicted with, as Gabriel Betteredge in The Moonstone would say, “detective fever”-- volunteers to ask around about the lead-up to the tragedy, to see if she can unearth any clues. So, “the game is afoot.” The book has its positives. It's a quick read (I read it in two sittings, and some readers might finish it in one), with an undemanding prose style and a strong narrative drive. (I would say that it's plot-driven rather than character-driven, but that isn't necessarily a flaw.) For those who, like myself, have read the first book, it's a chance to reconnect briefly with old friends (though Bo plays very little part in this episode). The nicely evoked small-town ambiance is a plus, and the author's love of dogs comes through. (Dog lovers may particularly appreciate this series in general, although here Macy doesn't get any canine assist in solving the mystery as she did in No Filter.) Our girl also doesn't put herself in such “too stupid to live” jeopardies as she did in the first book. She's learned to pack pepper spray instead of relying on a pocketknife; and though she thinks she's in great danger at one point, readers who actually picture the realistic physical possibilities of the situation won't be as scared for her as she is for herself. (In order to avoid spoilers, I can't be more specific!) Harper proves to be a character with unexpected depth, and was one reason I rated the book as highly as I did; as I said of Bo in the first book, I actually think she'd make a better series sleuth than Macy does. However, there are negatives as well (though one is just the converse of a positive, and not all of them would be regarded with the same weight by all readers). As in the first book, Macy doesn't genuinely solve the mystery; the solution is unexpectedly dropped into her lap by a confession. Under the circumstances, I found it hard to believe the confession would have been made in real life; to overcome that challenge, the character of the person making it would have had to be developed in enough depth to make it seem credible for that person, and that isn't done here. Similarly, the extreme events that culminated in the killing come, as it were, out of the blue; we're told about them, but we don't know enough about Delta as a person to have expected, or to genuinely feel in our gut, that this was something that could have likely happened. (Some of my Goodreads friends who frequently run into “dual timeline” narrative structures in their reads –I have only a little experience with reading that technique myself-- call attention to the drawbacks and difficulties of that method; but I actually think that structure might have worked better here, and this author would have the chops to pull it off.) The ultra-extreme overreaction of another character with secrets to learning that another character has vague and unsubstantiated suspicions in that general area also served to drop information into Macy's lap; but it doesn't come across as realistic in any setting outside of the old America's Dumbest Criminals TV show. Both of these confessions seem like shortcuts designed to end the book quickly; and in general, the whole composition has a sort of undeveloped or minimalist feel. Short stories, despite their shortness, can be carefully crafted as well-polished and emotionally evocative jewels. This short novel lacks that jewel-like quality; it's just short, and some readers would possibly find it more rewarding if it were significantly longer, and the space used to develop the characters more deeply, and to flesh some things out. Finally, it's doubtful that the police would have failed to again contact the person who made the confession, despite having done so already back in 1989. True, some of these criticisms are subjective; and it's also fair to note that the author is trying here to appeal to readers who actually want a very quick, light read, and who would be put off by more depth. But I have to review it from the standpoint of my own wants and likes. So, if I could give half stars here, my rating would be two and a half; I rounded up for the sake of the positives noted above. ...more |
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1
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May 03, 2023
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May 04, 2023
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Oct 10, 2023
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B0916DR5WL
| 4.57
| 407
| Oct 18, 2021
| Oct 18, 2021
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liked it
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The fifth installment of the popular Barks and Beans Cafe' mystery series removes Macy from the cafe' for most of the book's length, and provides her
The fifth installment of the popular Barks and Beans Cafe' mystery series removes Macy from the cafe' for most of the book's length, and provides her with a temporary sidekick in the person of secondary series character Della (mom to one of the cafe' employees), who was introduced in the second book, Iced Over. Della's a caregiver for elderly clients. We learn in the first chapter that the latest of the latter, one Lorraine Rosso (to whom Della was especially close), suddenly died the day before the book opens. She was bed-fast and didn't have a particularly strong heart, and the physician who examined her body attributed her death to heart failure. But while she wasn't a likely contender for any Olympic medals, she didn't previously appear to be at all near death's door; and Della has noted that one of the deceased's two pillows is unaccountably missing. (Was she smothered?) The widowed Lorraine didn't have a loving relationship with either of her two adult children, and didn't trust either of them. (She did trust Della implicitly.) Adding to the intrigue surrounding the situation, some time before she died Lorraine gave Della a letter, to be opened in the event of her demise. Signed (and witnessed by a neighbor), it reveals that when Lorraine's husband died, he left in her keeping an unspecified "object" of great value, which had come into the possession of his great-grandfather shortly after his immigration to America. (It bears the latter's initials, "F. R.") Not trusting his kids any more than Lorraine did, and believing that they'd simply fight over the object if they did inherit it, he charged her to pass it to some other worthy person. (The kids know a valuable object exists, but not what or where it is.) It further reveals that Lorraine has hidden this treasure, not in her own home, but in some undisclosed place in the Baxter Manor, a Lewisburg inn owned and run by her daughter and son-in-law, Camilla and Phelps Baxter, and designates Della as Lorraine's choice to be the heir of the object. (Lorraine's will, recently changed, will confirm this, though the lawyer won't read her name out loud when the will is officially read.) With Halloween approaching, the Baxter Manor --where the out-of-town contingent of Lorraine's family is staying, pending the reading of the will-- is sponsoring an upcoming "Spooks and Screams Weekend," to feature a candlelit ghost tour, a hayride, etc. Della proposes that she and her friend Macy sign up for this and book rooms in the inn for the weekend, under the guise of being a bit burnt out from their work and wanting a "girls weekend" to relax. That, she thinks, will give them a chance to secretly search for the treasure, and spy on family members who may be murder suspects. Readers who know Macy won't be surprised that she agrees. (She does have sense enough to contact her police detective friend and acquaint him with Della's suspicions.) This sets the stage for another typical Macy Hatfield outing, this one characterized by numerous red herrings, more than one mystery, faux supernatural elements, and some clean romance. Gilbert makes good use of actual Lewisburg area folklore, particularly the historical element of the "Greenbriar ghost," an instance where a claimed ghostly visitation actually provided verifiable courtroom evidence in an 1897 murder trial (https://www.wboy.com/only-on-wboy-com... ). Following the denouement, the concluding chapter brings us a couple of significant developments in the ongoing series story lines. Like the previous novels of the series, this was one Barb and I read together. In terms of style, plotting, texture, etc., this book has much in common with the preceding ones. However, I wasn't able to rate it quite as highly, because the initial premise struck me as implausible. Although she's a stronger fan of this particular series than I am, and more of a target audience for the "cozy" subgenre (of which this is a good example), Barb shared my criticisms on this point. While it heightens the mystery element for Della and Macy to be kept in the dark as to the identity and location of the mysterious treasure (which functions as a McGuffin here), there's no discernible reason for Lorraine to conceal this information. Her stated purpose was for Della to have the object; that purpose was threatened, not furthered, by not permitting her to have this information. Since the letter was given to Della, there was no danger of the kids getting it, and no more need to conceal the withheld information than to conceal the things she did reveal. (And surely a safety deposit box, with the key held by the bank or the lawyer, would be a more secure hiding place than placing the item in the home of two people who she was particularly anxious NOT to have find it?) Nonetheless, we enjoyed the tale for the diversion that it is, and plan to continue the series! ...more |
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Sep 08, 2023
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Nov 09, 2023
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Aug 23, 2023
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1735565148
| 9781735565149
| 1735565148
| 4.69
| 434
| Apr 19, 2021
| Apr 07, 2021
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really liked it
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Note: This review has no spoilers for this book; but it does presuppose that those who read it will have read the four full-length novels that precede
Note: This review has no spoilers for this book; but it does presuppose that those who read it will have read the four full-length novels that precede it in the series. I would definitely advise reading the series in order. When we finished this installment of the Barks and Beans Cafe' series, which we're reading together, my wife Barb (who's not on Goodreads), commenting on the appeal of the series as a whole to her, said that it's "simple, down-to-earth, country." She added words to the effect that much of its appeal comes from the basic likability of protagonist Macy Hatfield (who genuinely cares about others, and it shows), the small-town atmosphere, and the implicit message of the value of family and community. (And being an Appalachian native herself, the setting is a major plus for her.) Her comments do encapsulate a great deal of what the series has going for it, though I think its appeal would extend to readers in any geographic location, with or without an Appalachian connection or an actual rural or small-town background of their own. My star rating reflects what Barb would give it, since she's more the target audience --though I like the series too, and personally liked this particular book the best of those I've read so far (though it has enough similarity to the others that my general comments in most of those reviews would also apply to this one). For this adventure, Macy's brother Bo plays a much less prominent role than usual. He's in South America, and mostly incommunicado, for much of the book. As the first book ultimately revealed, he has a DEA background (from which he's "retired," sort of, but not so much so as not to keep his hand in at times!). Now, he's been called into a deep-cover mission to (hopefully) finally get the goods on Leo Moreau, the arch-criminal mastermind who's been his nemesis since his DEA days, and whose doings have formed a constant plot strand through the first four novels as well. But continuing character Kylie Baer, the Hatfield siblings' heavily-tattooed barista at Barks and Beans, plays a much bigger role than usual, and we get to know the usually taciturn and stand-offish young woman much better than heretofore. (Some mystery fans might wish that she were the series sleuth here! :-) Of course, Kylie wouldn't relish the circumstances that bring her so much to the fore here: early on, she happens to emerge as the leading suspect in the murder of her younger sister's detested boyfriend, who's found with one of her antique swords in his back.... This novel is paced and plotted very well, and presented in the straightforward, engaging style that's characteristic of the series. The mystery elements hold up to scrutiny. (As usual, pay attention to minor details; they may prove to be significant!) I actually guessed the identity of the principal baddie as soon as he/she was introduced, and foresaw the main outline of what was going on, though not some details; but that's only because I've read a lot in the mystery genre and understand some of its dynamics, not because the author ineptly telegraphs it. (She doesn't; my wife was in the dark until the big reveal.) Our small-town West Virginia setting continues to be effectively evoked; Coal and Waffles will appeal to dog lovers (and Stormy will please the cat persons in the reading community), and the interpersonal relationships outside of and around the mystery plot add texture. (These will see one significant development, but no spoilers!) At first, I felt that one not initially very likable character mellows and shows a more mature than expected side too quickly; but I ultimately put this down to the fact that first impressions can mislead us. Gilbert consciously (and skillfully) tailors this whole series to the tastes and expectations of "cozy" mystery fans in particular. For any of the latter who've discovered this series (and there are quite a few who have; this author has several series, in two genres, but this is the most popular of them!), and who have followed the previous installments, this one won't disappoint in the slightest. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 04, 2023
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Sep 07, 2023
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Aug 04, 2023
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B008E9VENQ
| 4.24
| 38,878
| Jun 23, 2012
| Jun 23, 2012
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liked it
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My Goodreads friend Monica gave this novel (the first book in the author's Miss Fortune Mysteries) five stars, which put it on my radar; and I'd downl
My Goodreads friend Monica gave this novel (the first book in the author's Miss Fortune Mysteries) five stars, which put it on my radar; and I'd downloaded the e-book edition some time ago when I discovered that it's offered for free, as a teaser for the series. While my rating isn't as high as hers (it would be three and 1/2 stars if Goodreads allowed that), and I didn't expect that it would be, I did turn out to like the book somewhat more than I expected to. Our protagonist and first-person narrator here is "Fortune" Redding. We're not told her real first name ("Fortune" is the handle she's used to answering to, but it's indicated, well into the book, that it's a nickname, short for "soldier of fortune") or her exact age; but she's worked for the CIA for eight or five years, depending on which figure we go with, since we're given both in different places. (I took the first one to start with, so picture her as about 30, joining the Company just after college.) The affiliation was a natural one for her; her father, with whom she had a prickly relationship, was a top CIA agent, and after his death when she was 15, her remaining teen years were overseen by a couple of CIA officials, one of whom is now her boss. (Her mother had died years earlier.) She's a seasoned assassin (of verified baddies), with a VERY long list of kills to her credit, and zero compunctions about her line of work. But she's neither a psychopath nor a moral nihilist; on the contrary, she's basically a kind-hearted person (albeit an emotionally-constipated loner with no confidential friends), who sympathizes readily with those in danger and distress. That trait got her in trouble on her latest mission. It wasn't supposed to be a hit; she was simply posing as the glamorous mistress of a drug dealer, delivering money for him to a Middle Eastern crime boss. But (as we learn along with her, at the debriefing in the first chapter) her meeting was compromised by an unknown leak in the CIA, who'd tipped the bad guys off as to who she was. They'd decided to test the tip by setting up a situation where she'd have to act to try to rescue a 12-year-old sex trafficking victim, figuring that she could then easily be dealt with, since she'd come unarmed. Unhappily for them, Fortune's quite adept at improvising a weapon when she has to; though she doesn't care much for high heels, she dispatched the head honcho with a stiletto heel on the shoes she was wearing, and got away clean, presumably with the 12-year-old. (We learn about this only in a terse second-hand report; I'd have loved to read it in real time!) Now, the deceased's brother Ahmad, also a big-time crime lord, has put her picture all over the Dark Web, with a million-dollar price on her head (ten million, if she can be delivered to him alive to be tortured). If Ahmad can be taken out, the contract on her will be moot, but in the meantime, she needs to be stashed in a safe place --and one that can't be compromised by the unidentified leaker. Luckily, her boss' niece, librarian and former beauty queen Sandy-Sue Morrow, just inherited a house in Sinful (population 253) in the bayou country of southern Louisiana from a newly-dead aunt on her mother's side. The two weren't close; Sandy-Sue has never been to Sinful, and she has no social media presence due to a stalking incident years ago. With summer just starting, she's scheduled to go down there to inventory the house's contents and prepare it for sale. Before the very unwilling Fortune can say "culture shock," her boss has packed the real Sandy-Sue off for a summer in Europe, and our heroine is in route to Louisiana to hide under this new identity. It's only supposed to be through the summer months; and in a small, quiet southern community, nothing's apt to go wrong, right? But the flooding caused by a recent hurricane unearthed and moved a lot of debris in the backwoods, and on Fortune's first evening in town, the late aunt's dog fishes a human bone out of the bayou behind the house. It proves to have belonged to a very wealthy, and universally hated, town resident who disappeared some five years ago.... As mysteries go, this one is not deep or in some respects very plausible, but it is entertaining. Despite the author's use of a humorous tone in most of it --though it has its serious moments, some of them deadly so (literally!)-- it's not really an example of the "cozy" subgenre, nor even of the broader stream of more "genteel" who-dunnits in general. That tradition features more actual detection in terms of sifting physical clues and witness statements, and eschews directly-described physical violence. There's little of the former here, and definitely some of the latter in the denouement. (Action-heroine fans may be pleasantly surprised to find that Fortune's combat skills won't necessarily have to go to waste in this new environment!) But the mystery of who killed Harvey Chicoran doesn't necessarily have an immediately obvious solution (many characters, and no doubt readers, may assume that the widow did it --but did she?). There will be twists and turns in solving it, and Fortune's involvement in that effort will provide her --and readers-- with challenges, adventures, excitement and danger. A weakness of the book is that a lot of the humor exaggerates the quirkiness and peculiarities of the Louisiana bayou country's rural inhabitants to the point of caricature. It plays to stereotypes that too many urbanites have about the South, and rural people in general, which reflects culpable ignorance of cultures outside their own. Fortune herself is a prime example; she seriously wonders, for instance, if the community she's going to has electricity. (Rolls eyes profusely.) She also has a tendency to reduce women with Sandy-Sue's background to despised, stereotyped "Others." Some characters, like the members of the Sinful Ladies Society (membership is only open to "old maids" or widows of 10 years standing, to avoid contamination by "silly man thinking"), are steeped in misandry, and Deleon views that as funny. This is mitigated to a degree by the fact that she's native to the region (which I've visited) herself, does reveal some basic affection for it, and depicts it with some realistic local color; and by the fact that she does portray a couple of male characters positively. There are also a few inconsistencies that should have been caught and edited out. On the positive side, this is a tautly paced book that keeps you turning pages, or in my case clicking frames (I read the first two-thirds of it in one sitting, and could and would have read it all if time had allowed!), with a tightly-compressed plot that unfolds in less than a week. Even if you disagree with some of Fortune's attitudes, she is honestly likable, with a wryly humorous narrative voice that's appealing (at least to this reader). She exhibits a willingness to look at herself and grow through exposure to new experience, which I like; and I appreciated the strong depiction of female friendship and loyalty. There's a certain amount of bad language here, mostly of the h and d-word sort or vulgarisms, but not much profanity and no obscenity; and there's no sexual content nor any romance at all (though I understand that a romance develops in subsequent books in the series). While Fortune describes herself, though not out loud, as a "heathen" (when she's informed that everybody in Sinful who's not one of the latter attends one of its two churches), and there's some humor based on the foibles of the church-goers, there's no actual pushing of an anti-Christian agenda. I only read this book as a diversion, because it was free; I don't plan to follow the series. But I don't regret making Fortune's acquaintance, nor visiting her in her new-found community. :-) ...more |
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1
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Jul 26, 2024
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Aug 02, 2024
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Jul 24, 2023
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1735565113
| 9781735565118
| 1735565113
| 4.60
| 384
| Oct 12, 2020
| Oct 12, 2020
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really liked it
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Most readers of this third installment of the Barks and Beans Cafe Mystery series will have read the previous books; and it's really best to have done
Most readers of this third installment of the Barks and Beans Cafe Mystery series will have read the previous books; and it's really best to have done so, because some aspects of the plot and relationships build incrementally on previous developments. Likewise, most people reading this review have most likely read my reviews of the earlier two volumes; and all the general comments I made in those would apply with equal relevance here. So it's probably not necessary to provide a very long review here; it would inevitably involve a lot of repetition. :-) However, the book itself doesn't have a repetitive feel; we're getting used to the community and to our small circle of continuing characters, who by now are old friends, but the author knows how to vary her plots and situations with each outing for series protagonist Macy. I didn't say “series sleuth,” because Macy isn't exactly one. Mysteries rear their head in her vicinity, and she gamely tries to investigate them (and she can be plucky when it's needed, too!); but when the mysteries get solved, it's not typically by her deductive efforts. Jane Marple she definitely ain't. :-) (But that's okay –we like her for who she is!) This particular book takes place over just a few days in the summer following the events of the prior book(s). Specifically, it's August; so, coming closer to the first anniversary of the opening of the Barks and Beans Cafe.' More noticeably, it's the month of the annual West Virginia State Fair, which really is held just outside of Lewisburg (as noted in an earlier review, the latter is an actual real-life place). When our tale opens, the fair is open as well, and the Barks and Beans crew have set up an iced coffee booth on the fairgrounds, in quest of publicity and added sales. Musical entertainment for the fair-goers is to be provided by (fictional) country music superstar Carolina Garten and her band. Though she moved to Tennessee when she was eleven, Carolina's a Lewisburg native; and though they lost touch after she left, she and Macy were schoolmates and best friends in their early years. A chance meeting lets them reconnect –but that night, Carolina winds up in the hospital with what proves to be Digoxin poisoning, and it clearly wasn't accidental. From there, Macy goes on to get a bird's-eye view of a high powered country music milieu that's rife with intrigue, secrets,and dark agendas. My wife liked this book as well as the preceding ones. I actually liked it a bit better; I felt the plotting was tighter, and the mystery elements were more challenging. (Then two, the comic relief provided by the antics of the shelter dog Waffles had me chuckling out loud in a couple of places. :-) ) Again, recommended for fans of this type of fiction (but read the preceding books first!). ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 30, 2023
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Jul 09, 2023
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Jun 30, 2023
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B08651VYB3
| 4.53
| 487
| Jul 09, 2020
| Jul 27, 2020
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really liked it
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My own rating for this second volume of the author's "cozy" mystery series would be three stars here (four on Amazon's scale, which is less nuanced);
My own rating for this second volume of the author's "cozy" mystery series would be three stars here (four on Amazon's scale, which is less nuanced); but I considered it fairer and more accurate to go with my wife's rating, four and a half stars, because she's more a part of the target audience. Other things being equal, I do prefer the more cerebral traditional school of mystery writing over the more violent and often morally cynical strand of the genre; but even so, I'm not really a strong fan of the standard tropes of the "cozy" sub-set of the traditional group. That said, though, this is an ably written, well plotted and congenial example of the sub-set, by an author who thoroughly understands its conventions and who can work within them to craft an involving tale. This series is best read in order. The first book took place in September-October; this one begins with a Thanksgiving dinner in the same fall, and again centers around series protagonist Macy, her older brother (and business partner in the Barks and Beans shelter dog-petting cafe') Bo and their friends and employees. We're still in the same small-town West Virginia setting. Most readers of this book, and this review, will (and should) have read the series opener; for those who didn't, my review of that book, here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... , provides still relevant background. Here, we meet a new Barks and Beans employee, young Bristol Goddard, and her family. Her uncle, Clark, is a driver for a local armored car company; but we've barely met him before he's the comatose victim of a Black Friday armored car crash on a black-iced mountain road. When it develops that half a million dollars in cash that the truck was carrying is now missing, the plot thickens. Macy is as rash and impulsive, and as afflicted with "detective fever" (though not necessarily endowed with great detective skills!) as ever; but she's a likable protagonist. Her rescued Great Dane, Coal, and the other shelter dogs give this series an appeal to dog lovers; and the small-town Appalachian atmosphere continues to be a strength here. (Based on Heather's textured treatment of her setting, I'm inclined to say that if she ever wanted to, she could write effective general fiction with a West Virginia setting, in the tradition of regionalist Realism, and carry the latter on admirably.) Readers whose interest in mystery fiction is for the mystery, rather than for romance, will be glad that there's very little, if any, reference to romantic attraction; this is a mystery, not a romance posing as one. With an evangelical author, church-going main characters and no foul language or sexual content, the series is Christian-friendly, but doesn't carry religious messages as such. All in all, the series is perfectly crafted for "cozy" fans; I'd highly recommend it to all of the latter, and to any other fans of the genre who can enjoy rather light mystery reads. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Jun 04, 2023
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Jun 30, 2023
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Jun 04, 2023
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Kindle Edition
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099782798X
| 9780997827989
| 099782798X
| 4.29
| 1,009
| May 26, 2020
| May 08, 2020
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liked it
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Note, Jan. 23, 2024: I've just edited this review to correct a typo. Heather Day Gilbert is the author of at least three traditional mystery series set Note, Jan. 23, 2024: I've just edited this review to correct a typo. Heather Day Gilbert is the author of at least three traditional mystery series set in her native West Virginia. My wife Barb and I had previously read (and greatly liked) her A Murder in the Mountains series. When the author, who's a Goodreads friend of mine, generously donated the first three installments of this series to the Bluefield Univ. library where I work, we decided to try this series opener as our next book to read together. Our setting here is Lewisburg, WV, a real-life county-seat town (population ca. 3,600) in the state's southeastern part. Series protagonist (and first-person narrator) Macy Hatfield and her older brother were raised here by a now-deceased aunt after they were orphaned young. Bo left to join the Marines, and after his service went on to become a high-powered executive in a coffee-importing business based in California. When she was about 30, Macy married and followed her husband to South Carolina. Some seven years and one divorce later (the husband proved to be a cheating jerk), when our tale opens, Macy's working at an uninspiring clerical job for the state DMV. Unexpectedly, Bo calls with news, and a business proposition. He's broken up with his fiancee and co-worker Tara Rainey, and as a result quit his job and moved back home to Aunt Athaleen's house (which the Hatfield siblings co-inherited). With his coffee-importing contacts, he's planning to open a coffee shop, and has remodeled part of the front of the house accordingly. But he wants it to be a “petting cafe,” one with an area where customers can interact with shelter dogs. (These kinds of cafes, featuring various animal species, are a real-life thing, originating in Taiwan in 1998; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_... .) That's where born “dog person” Macy, whose dream job is working with dogs, comes in. She's soon partnered with him in the business, and living in the remainder of the old house. (We don't get a really clear idea of the physical layout of the remodeled building, but that's a minor point.) Just two days after the Barks and Beans Cafe opens, the Ivy Hill [Pseudo-]”Spiritual Center for Healing,” a sort of posh combination spa and activity center that caters to the monied crowd, is the scene of a brutal murder –its golf instructor, Gerard Fontaine, is found on the links, his head smashed in with one of his golf clubs. His coal-black Great Dane, Coal (yes, that's the dog on the book cover!), gets brought to the animal shelter Barks and Beans works with; and naturally Macy adopts him. But that small Ivy Hill connection will prove bigger than expected, and draw her into a dangerous maze of secrets and lies. To situate this book/series in its literary context, I said above that it's a “traditional” mystery, which concentrates on finding the hidden solution of a mystery by mostly cerebral processes, rather than on gun-play and fisticuffs. Within that branch of the genre, it's part of the sub-set usually called “cozy” (and in fact the back cover copy uses that term, though it's one that I personally don't much care for –I have to agree with the rhetorical question of another Goodreader, “What's cozy about murder?”). That is, it has a small-town setting, features an amateur sleuth (usually female, which is the case here), minimizes gritty and gory content, and gives some attention to everyday activities and relationships. This book is also fiction written by an evangelical Christian (and though self-published, it follows ECPA/CBA guidelines, so there's no sexual content or bad language). Macy and Bo are churchgoing people; though he was engaged to Tara, Bo refrained from premarital sex with her, and there's a reference to grace said over a meal at one point. That said, there's intentionally much less reference here to the characters' faith than there is in the A Murder in the Mountains series. (For instance, we never see Macy pray in dangerous situations, though she's certainly in jeopardies at times that would prompt the average believer –and even some nonbelievers!-- to pray quite fervently.) The earlier series was marketed partly as “Christian fiction;” this one is marketed just as mystery, and designed to appeal to a broader audience than Christian readers only (though I think the former one actually could also). Going into the book, a concern I had was that Macy might suffer from comparison with Tess Spencer, the protagonist of the other series. Unfortunately, for me that was the case. Macy does come across as basically good hearted, and likable enough; and I didn't mind the fact that she's some 12-15 years or so older than Tess (who, of course, ages some during her series), and currently single. But she's also not as smart and intuitive as Tess, and doesn't come across with as much personal appeal. Nor is she as competent at sleuthing, and she's far less prepared to protect herself in dangerous situations. Macy can handle a rifle, but keeps it in a gun safe; in situations where Tess would pack a Glock and a switchblade, Macy counts on a pocketknife. (At one point, she worries that “it seemed miserably short-bladed” --well, yeah; DUH!) She exposes herself to danger more than once, not because she's especially brave (when danger is actually manifest, she's not really a paragon of courage) but because she just refuses to truly grasp how dangerous her actions are. On those occasions, she had Barb and I both rolling our eyes big time, and for me the acronym TSTL (“too stupid to live”) came to mind. While she does find one important clue the police neglected (and if small-town cops are really that negligent, we have reason to worry!), it wasn't a surprise that she doesn't actually solve the crime; instead, the murderer confesses and explains the whole motive and M.O. to our heroine when the latter is supposedly about to be dispatched, a trope I've never been fond of. (Of course, Macy survives; that's no spoiler, given that there are eight books and stories in the series so far, and that she can't narrate this one if she's dead.) Other things being equal, I usually find female protagonists more interesting than males; but I have to admit that here, IMO, Bo would make a better series sleuth than Macy does. Other quibbles I had include the fact that though the author is familiar with Lewisburg, there's not very much local color or sense of place in the depiction here. (It's also odd that Macy complains at one point about not knowing many people in the community or having friends to talk to. She lived here for 28 years, went through K-12 schooling here, attends the church she was raised in, and wasn't away for all that long; and even during those years, the town had postal, telephone and Internet service.) Though it's difficult to explain why without spoilers, to me the circumstances of Bo's break-up with Tara don't ring true as something that would plausibly happen in the real world, on more counts than one. Summer Adkins apparently runs her animal shelter as a for-profit business, charging people for animal adoptions, while Ivy Hill seems to be a non-profit, depending on donations. (Exactly who owns it and how its governance is set up is more than a little murky and confusing, at least to me.) It seems that the opposite would be true; animal shelters are typically (universally, in my experience) donation-dependent nonprofits where adoptions are free –-many people complain enough about having to pay for the animals' shots and neuterings as it is-- and places like Ivy Hill offer in-demand classes and services which well-heeled people pay well for, not free community services that philanthropists would support. For these reasons, I liked the books featuring Tess better than this one. But I did like this one (and Barb liked it even better than I did --she'd have given it four stars!). On the positive side, it has one massive surprise development that I did not see coming, and which greatly changes the reader's mental landscape; and while I can sometimes guess the identity of the culprit in fictional mysteries, I didn't guess it at all here. This will particularly appeal to dog lovers; Coal is a charmer even to those of us whose affectionate feelings for animals are more moderate (and he does play a big part in the story). For those readers who like a romantic element in their reading, there are the seeds of not one but two probable future romantic triangles; but this strand of the plotting adds to the tale rather than swallowing it up. (Barb calls attention to the book's “down home” ambiance, and the likability of the main characters.) While it's not a profound novel or stylistic masterpiece (and doesn't aspire to be!), I think it would please most “cozy” readers, or just general readers who want light diversion, and aren't put off by my quibbles. We're going to follow the series, at least through the volumes that the BU library has, and fully expect that it will continue to entertain us. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 19, 2022
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Mar 18, 2023
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Dec 19, 2022
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Paperback
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B09HVXCQ17
| 4.52
| 166
| Mar 14, 2022
| Mar 14, 2022
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really liked it
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By now, Heather Day Gilbert is a favorite author for both my wife and I, and series protagonist Tess Spencer is one of our favorite fictional sleuths.
By now, Heather Day Gilbert is a favorite author for both my wife and I, and series protagonist Tess Spencer is one of our favorite fictional sleuths. As always, we read this fourth and final installment together. (Full disclosure: it came to us as a kind gift from the author herself, who's a much-valued Goodreads friend.) For us, it was an enjoyable visit with old friends, though bittersweet because it'll be the last one. Many of the general comments in my reviews of the three previous books would also apply to this one; and I would absolutely recommend reading all four books in order, rather than starting with this one. The characters and their situations do develop organically over time. (Note: I don't recommend reading the Goodreads description, which is also the cover blurb. IMO, it imparts a lot of plot information that readers might prefer to learn as the author more slowly discloses it.) Our story here is told entirely in Tess' first-person, present-tense narration. It's about a year and four months after the events of the previous book, Guilt by Association, and Tess and hubby Thomas are now adoptive parents to Brady, the little boy she rescued from an abusive home in that book, as well as natural parents to toddler daughter Mira Brooke. Thomas is running for reelection as the county prosecutor, and Tess is still working as secretary to Zeke Tucker (also introduced earlier in the series), the detective on Buckneck's small police force, who respects her deductive acumen enough to occasionally ask for her opinions and minor assistance. Early on, four disturbing elements upend the peaceful course of local life. First, a young local woman who works at the library in the nearby larger town of Point Pleasant (which is a real-life community) turns up mysteriously missing. Second, for the first time since late in 1967, there are credible reports of sightings of the "Mothman." (Several sightings of this cryptid were reported in this area in real life in 1966-67, and Point Pleasant boasts a Mothman Museum and an annual Mothman Festival. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothman .) Third, there are indications that the county prosecutor election is about to take a down-and-dirty turn (as backwoods electoral politics in West Virginia historically sometimes has). And finally, the close-knit Spencer clan is confronted by an unexpected and maybe life-threatening medical crisis. Are any of the first three events related to each other? If so, how? Will the resolution of events leave everybody still standing? For answers to these and other questions, you'll have to read the book. But you can rest assured that events will get a lot hairier before you turn the last page.... :-) With just 205 pages of actual text (there's also an appended recipe for the potato soup that appears in the book as a comfort food), this is a pretty quick read, provided that you aren't reading it only sporadically as a "car book;" some fans might devour it in one or two sittings. The narrative is fast paced; for Barb and I, our attention was engaged throughout. I can sometimes guess the identity of the culprit before the reveal in mysteries that I read, but I didn't here (though I did suspect the general outline of the solution to one plot strand). There's somewhat more reference to prayer and reliance on Christian faith here than in some of the earlier books, or at least that's my impression, but that's mostly a natural response to the health crisis of a family member. (Tess and her family are church-going evangelicals, as is the author.) My only real quibble with the plotting was that Tess doesn't actually solve the mystery here by her own sleuthing efforts. But the narrative carries the reader along on an engaging ride anyway. There's no stress on violence or blood and gore here; Heather's approach is solidly in the genre's more cerebral, traditional camp. Note: I've long known that Heather has a lot of commonality with her series heroine here. Both ladies are West Virginia natives, share an evangelical Christian faith, like video games, and have strong, supportive relationships with their husband's families. (And I suspect that both are smart, tough gals who are very protective of others. :-) ) In researching this review, I discovered that, like Tess and Thomas, Heather and her husband also served as foster parents for a child whom they went on to adopt. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 19, 2022
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May 15, 2022
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Mar 07, 2022
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Kindle Edition
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0892963557
| 9780892963553
| 0892963557
| 3.93
| 512
| Dec 1988
| 1989
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really liked it
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Beginning in the 19th century, British authors contributed substantially to the development of the mystery genre, and a number of mystery novels and s
Beginning in the 19th century, British authors contributed substantially to the development of the mystery genre, and a number of mystery novels and stories are set in the British Isles. In the 1800s, and well on into the 1900s, a class of landed gentry in Great Britain, as well as some of the nobility, still derived their wealth from agriculture, by farming their land directly and/or by renting it to tenant farmers. The rural countryside was dotted with their mansions. These might house a single landowner or a large immediate or even extended family, or anything in between; employ multiple servants (especially without modern labor-saving devices, the upkeep of buildings this large required a staff); and play host for extended periods to upper-class guests, sometimes quite a few at a time. As editor Godfrey notes in passing in his Introduction, “economic reality” (which he doesn't analyze here) after World War II swept these establishments out of existence for the most part. But in their heyday, they furnished many an author with fictional settings for crime; and even today provide historical mystery writers with similar possibilities. A medical doctor who's also a mystery buff, Thomas Godfrey has here collected 22 short stories which illustrate this subset of the genre, the oldest published in 1858. Despite the title of the collection, not all of them involve murder; and a couple, "Death on the Air" and “The Hunt Ball,” aren't actually set even partly in a country house, though the characters occupy the same social strata. (The former takes place in London, and the latter in a provincial town hall; Godfrey wryly suggests that here we picture Town Hall as “the residence of Lord and Lady Town.” :-) ) Most of the represented authors are British (the two exceptions lived in England for long periods). Though American and Canadian mystery writers have produced tales using this kind of setting, in the editor's estimation you have to be an "authentic" English writer to be sufficiently immersed in the setting and culture to bring it to really realistic life. Some of the biggest names in the genre are included among the 22 authors, such as Conan Doyle, Christie, Chesterton, Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, and Margery Allingham, as well as newer giants Ruth Rendell and P. D. James. Arrangement of the selections is mostly, but not completely, chronological, though publication dates aren't always given. The roughly five-page Introduction mostly provides Godfrey's discussion of what he feels are the defining characteristics of the sub-genre in terms of fan expectations; he thinks, for instance, that character development should be decidedly secondary to plot (actually, the stories themselves vary in that respect --the Chesterton and Christie selections in particular present good character development with rewarding interpersonal reactions, while the characterizations as such in the Sayers story aren't as sharp, IMO), and that engagement with serious social or philosophical issues should be avoided. He also offers his half tongue-in-cheek "Rules of the House” for how these mysteries should be written, though he allows for exceptions. What he stresses is the evocation of an atmosphere and the preservation of genre tropes; his treatment is humorous, poking gentle fun at the tradition –but his fun is indeed gentle rather than caustic, since he clearly likes this whole milieu. Four of the included authors --Doyle, Wilkie Collins, Baroness Orczy, and Robert Barr-- are also represented in the anthology Victorian Tales of Mystery and Detection, but by different stories. Each selection has a short (a paragraph or two) introduction to the author and his/her work. Doyle is represented by the lead story, and the only selection here that I'd previously read, “The Adventure of the Abbey Grange,” from the Sherlock Holmes canon. Other series characters besides Holmes are well represented here as well, with appearances by, among others, Chesterton's Father Brown, Marsh's Inspector Alleyn, Orczy's female series sleuth, Lady Molly from Lady Molly Of Scotland Yard (since that collection is on my "maybe-to-read" shelf, this story definitely whetted my appetite for it!), Barr's expatriate French detective Eugene Valmont, R. Austin Freeman's Dr. Thorndyke, M.D., Christie's Harley Quinn, and Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey. (I'd never encountered the Christie character before, and this is only the second Lord Peter story that I've ever read.) On the other hand, some equally well-known series sleuths, such as Allingham's Campion and Rendell's Inspector Wexford, are absent; their creators are represented, but by stories featuring different characters. “A Marriage Tragedy” by Wilkie Collins, set mostly in Cumberland in northwestern England, is the oldest selection; and the main story actually takes place decades before the author's present (so, in the early 1800s), because he uses the device of a story related by an elderly man to the first narrator. It's an absorbing enough tale, though marred by the Victorian trope of the supposed inability of the nervous system of females (or at least virtuous females) to cope with strong emotional stress. (I still want to eventually read some of Collins' long fiction, despite my eye-rolling at that aspect of this story.) Freeman Wills Crofts is the author of “The Hunt Ball” (see above), and it features his series sleuth, Inspector French of Scotland Yard. This one is an example of what Godfrey calls an “inverted” mystery –we're shown the planning and committing of the crime, so the unexplained element isn't who did it, but how French will discover and prove the culprit's identity. One of my favorite selections is the Father Brown story, "The Doom of the Darnaways;" it's the most Gothic of them, with an intensely atmospheric tone and setting and the motif of a family curse --but at the same time, Chesterton's message is a ringing endorsement of rationality (his clerical detective also makes the point that Christianity is not about disparaging reason in The Innocence of Father Brown), and of human free will against both superstitious and materialistic ideas of determinism. Christie's "The Shadow on the Glass" and Sayers' "The Queen's Square" are both satisfying tales with complex and challenging mysteries that have highly original solutions. (A weakness in the Christie story, though, is that the murder method has a significant logistical problem which isn't addressed; and there are also forensic aspects there which would have come to the fore even in 1930, but which aren't mentioned.) Perhaps the most challenging puzzle here was the one posed by Christianna Brand (a new-to-me author) in "The Man on the Roof," which was another of my favorites here. I also have to mention James Miles' wonderful "The Worcester Enigma" as an outstanding example of a Sherlock Holmes pastiche (I can't tell Miles' prose style from Doyle's!). “Jeeves and the Stolen Venus” by P. G. Wodehouse (my first introduction to his work) is a purely humorous approach to the country-house mystery, and very much an exercise in dry British humor. Some American readers may find this hard to appreciate, and might find the also very British period slang used by Bertie and his aunt to be a challenge; but I liked the story. It reminded me in a way of J. M. Barrie's play The Admirable Crichton, because, like Crichton, Jeeves is quite obviously vastly smarter and more competent than his upper-crust employer. Among the other stories not featuring murders, Barr's "Lord Chizelrigg's Missing Fortune" and Freeman's "The Blue Scareb" are both suitably challenging hidden-treasure mysteries. Allingham's "The Same to Us," deals with a jewel robbery. It's notable as an exercise in dry English satirical humor, which also very effectively sends up and skewers the unconscious racism of many upper-crust Brits of that day. (Not having read much of Allingham's work, I found that an agreeable surprise!) The selections by Rendell ("Fen Hall") and James ("A Very Desirable Residence"), as Godfrey notes, reflect a time when country houses are relics of the past, no longer viable to maintain, decaying and inhabited by newcomers who have no connection to or appreciation of their tradition. These two were my least favorite stories here, exuding a moral cynicism at odds with the vision that historically undergirded the British school of mystery fiction, although James admittedly gives her tale a brilliant twist, and ends on a note of almost (Henry) Jamesian irony. In keeping with her reputation, Rendell's story is the darkest of the two. Overall, this is an excellent gathering of mystery fiction, which should please genre fans, and especially those who appreciate the traditional approach and the "Golden Age" classics. ...more |
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not set
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Jul 2022
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Jun 11, 2021
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Hardcover
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1842320963
| 9781842320969
| 1842320963
| 3.86
| 1,768
| Mar 01, 1936
| Sep 24, 2010
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liked it
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Note on the Goodreads description for this book: every one of the three sentences involves a major inaccuracy, so readers are best advised to ignore i
Note on the Goodreads description for this book: every one of the three sentences involves a major inaccuracy, so readers are best advised to ignore it! In 1936 (the author's present) Los Angeles, lawyer Perry Mason is visited by a man who claims to be (but IS he?) William Mallory, Anglican bishop of Sydney, Australia. He gives Mason a heads-up that he's soon to be consulted about a case involving "the rights of a woman who has been greatly wronged." Mallory will be a witness in that case, and he doesn't want his contact with Mason to be known. What he reveals is the introduction to a tangled case that will involve: the inheritance rights to a millionaire's estate; a manslaughter charge from a drunk-driving allegation back in 1914; a long-missing fugitive; two claimants to be the aforesaid millionaire's granddaughter (only one of whom can be genuine); abuse of wealth and power; and, before it's over, murder, disappearance of key players in the case, thugs up to skulduggery, and lots and lots of hidden secrets and hard-to-unravel mysteries. As a kid, I was a fan of the 1957-1966 TV series Perry Mason, starring Raymond Burr, which was inspired by Gardner's series; and I also read several of the later books, written in the 50s and 60s (Gardner died in 1970), though I'd never listed them here because I couldn't recall the titles. (There are something like 85 books in the series, but they don't need to be read in order.) I read this one, picked from a library, to give Gardner some representation on my shelves that would at least reflect the fact that I'd read his work. As it turned out, though, this early Mason incarnation isn't actually very representative of the later ones that I read. The later Mason had evolved into the urbane, polished figure aptly portrayed by Burr, and the style had matured into something more like the traditional mysteries of writers like Christie (which I was reading at the same time in my life). But his early roots were in the noir, "hard-boiled" tradition of inter-war American detective pulp fiction, which is more violent, grittier, and written with a lot of slang and tough talk; Mason here, despite his law degree, comes across as more of a roughneck. That's not to say that the mystery isn't challenging, and doesn't require considerable deductive reasoning --it does. (I figured out some things before the reveal, but very far from everything.) And unlike some writers in this tradition, Gardner does have a solid moral vision, and his protagonist reflects it --Mason won't take big money to help a guilty brat escape the consequences of his actions, though he has an offer. He's genuinely interested in using his skills to see justice done. As in the later books and the TV series, Mason employs detective Paul Drake and his agency to do much of his leg work; but he's the deductive brains behind the solution of the mysteries, and here he's also involved in some evidence-gathering on his own --in one case, putting both himself and his secretary Della Street in danger rather foolishly, IMO. (Della plays a more active role in investigation here than her later incarnations would.) There's no sexual content here, and no romance for the unmarried hero --it's clear to the reader in a couple of places, from her body language, that Della is romantically attracted to him; but for somebody who prides himself on his ability to read people, he's sadly clueless to this. (Of course, given that he often addresses her as "kid," he's probably significantly older than she is.) Bad language is mostly of the h- and d-word variety, and not extensive, though there are a couple instances of religious profanity I didn't appreciate. Racist language here in a couple of places is also grating --a character, in praising an action, says that it's "white of you" (as if whites hold the monopoly on commendable behavior!), and Mason uses the n-word casually. (There are no black characters here; he's using it simply as part of a colloquialism --but still!) Overall, I felt there were enough positives here to rate this at three stars (rounded up from two and a half). But I don't plan to revisit the series, since there are other fictional detectives I like better. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 14, 2020
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Oct 22, 2020
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Oct 14, 2020
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Paperback
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0448095017
| B00005WSA6
| 3.98
| 84,011
| Apr 28, 1930
| 1999
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it was ok
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Beginning in 1927, the Stratemeyer Syndicate began publishing a series of mysteries, marketed to children and featuring two teenaged brothers, the Har
Beginning in 1927, the Stratemeyer Syndicate began publishing a series of mysteries, marketed to children and featuring two teenaged brothers, the Hardy Boys, as amateur sleuths. "Franklin W. Dixon," a house pen name, served as the byline for all the books, which were actually written by various authors. The series quickly proved to be so popular, mostly with boy readers, that the syndicate soon decided to try a distaff version, employing the same formula, to see if it would prove similarly popular with girls. For this series, the house pen name adopted was "Carolyn Keene;" but the actual author for the first several books, including this series opener published in 1930, was one Mildred Wirt Benson (who at this time was still Mildred Wirt --Benson was her married name). The venture did prove equally successful, and both series have continued, in various incarnations, down to the present day. As a kid, I discovered the Hardy Boys, and read and liked several of the books; that helped to spark my interest in the mystery genre (though even back then, I recognized that the works of Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle were more satisfying). But I never ran across any mention of Nancy Drew until I was significantly older, and my interests had moved beyond the Hardy Boys. Over the years from then to now, I've sometimes regretted that I didn't get into reading the Nancy Drew books at the same time I was perusing "Dixon's" corpus; I already liked and was intrigued by competent heroines with some "tomboy" characteristics, and would probably have appreciated her on that basis. With the advent of the Internet, especially Goodreads, I ran across comments and reviews from adult readers who appreciated the Nancy Drew books; and knowing that I have read and liked a number of kid's books as an adult, I put this one on my to-read shelf. Since I was looking to work in a short book before year's end, this seemed like an opportune time to finally read it. (I actually read it in the 1959 omnibus edition that printed it with the second book, The Hidden Staircase, not the later one shown here.) As far as the quickness of the read goes, it lived up to expectations. But that was the only way in which it did. Some children's books certainly can appeal to adult readers; and indeed, all four of my Goodreads friends who've rated this one gave it four stars. I'm sorry to be an outlier (perhaps because for me it's not tinctured with fond childhood memories), but I can't regard it as anything more than "okay." Part of this is due to the stylistic blandness that the Stratemeyer Syndicate cultivated (and which shows in the Hardy Boys books as well). In order to facilitate the employment of multiple authors for the series, they didn't want any personal style to show in one book that later writers couldn't just as well imitate, nor any very distinct developments of the characters or setting in one book, beyond their basic series description, that writers of later books would then have to know. To let readers from all over the country identify better with Nancy, they also chose to make the location of River Heights, the "small city" where she lives, indistinct; it's not near the sea, but we have no clue what state, or even in what region of the country, it's in. So there's no sense of place whatsoever. All of this contributes to a very minimalist style, and to scanty characterization. The book is definitely plot-driven, and has a pretty linear structure (dealing with a search for a missing will, with a closely-entwined subplot involving thieves posing as furniture purchasers). In itself, that's not a flaw. But the plot moves almost entirely as a result of fortuitous coincidences, the combination of which greatly challenges suspension of disbelief. Much of the dialogue, and much of Nancy's internal reflection, is fairly inane, with a lot of repetition and statement (and often restatement) of the obvious. Nancy and her dad, who's a lawyer, get information at one point from a fellow attorney of his which I'm sure in real life would have been a violation of professional ethics to disclose (and since the two men are friends and law school classmates, it's hard to imagine that the friend has never met Nancy before --she grew up in River Heights, and is now 18). And as at least one other Goodreader has remarked, the title itself divulges a significant detail that's obviously spoilerish. Some might argue, in extenuation, that all of these flaws are just characteristics of all children's literature, and that it's churlish of an adult to expect anything better or to criticize what's delivered, when supposedly no child readers would be in the least critical. But the problem with that defense of the book is that it's simply flat-out wrong. True, as a, say, nine-year-old child, I was less critical than I am now, and would have rated this a star higher. But even then, I would have noted these features as flaws that made the book less interesting than others I liked more; and I've read a LOT of children's literature, both back then and as an adult, that has none of these flaws, and that stacks up far higher in literary quality. I'm not sorry to have satisfied my curiosity, and finally made Nancy's acquaintance. She's plucky, resourceful, obviously smart --it's odd that though she's newly graduated from high school, nothing is said about college being in her future, since even in 1930 a lawyer's daughter might well expect to further her education-- and can even change a tire, something a good many people, both female and male (including me) can't do even in 2023. But despite all that, I'm not really interested in reading any more of the series. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 12, 2023
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Dec 15, 2023
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Jul 10, 2020
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Hardcover
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1500646121
| 9781500646127
| 1500646121
| 4.23
| 46,962
| Oct 22, 1917
| Jul 26, 2014
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really liked it
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My Goodreads friend Steve Haywood and I agreed, early this year, to read this collection together this month as a buddy read. He wanted to do a story
My Goodreads friend Steve Haywood and I agreed, early this year, to read this collection together this month as a buddy read. He wanted to do a story collection; and I suggested this one, since I knew it was the only remaining book in the Holmes canon that I hadn't officially read. So, on turning the last page, I marked another literary milestone, completing an odyssey begun in childhood; there are no more original Sherlock Holmes stories to read for the first time! As it turned out, there probably weren't any more I hadn't read even before I turned the first page. :-) Of the eight stories in this edition, the only one I possibly hadn't previously read elsewhere was "The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax" --I'm not sure if I'd actually read the story itself or just had very vivid memories of the adaptation on the old PBS Mystery! series, starring Jeremy Brett as Holmes. (In any case, the ending of the actual story differs significantly from that of the adaptation --and I like Doyle's better than the scriptwriters'.) Had I known this, I might not have suggested the book as a buddy read, since I rarely reread books, and the read did prove to be very quick on my end; but I did reread or closely skim most of the stories this time, and that actually proved to be quite worthwhile, because in the years since reading most of these, I'd forgotten a number of significant details, which I enjoyed re-discovering! ("The Adventure of the Cardboard Box" was the only one I didn't reread, having just read it last year and commented on it in my review of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, where it originally appeared. It wasn't included in the original, 1917 British edition of this collection; but it did appear in the 1917 American edition published by Doran, of which this edition is a quality reprint.) Unlike some reviewers, I find the quality of Doyle's work throughout the Holmes canon pretty consistent, and this collection is much of a piece, in style and quality, with the preceding and following ones. Holmes and Watson are their usual vividly-drawn selves, and their camaraderie and friendship adds to the enjoyment of the stories. The mysteries are solved by the application of rational deduction accompanied by minute observation of detail, but the settings and story elements often, in Romantic fashion, incorporate the exotic, the scary and the "grotesque" --a word which our heroes discuss at the beginning of "The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge," with, as it turns out, good reason. :-) All of these stories are set in England, but they may be very much subject to sinister foreign influences: the past outrages of a Central American dictatorship, the activities of southern Italy's organized crime, poison used by African witch doctors. Even in England, the Gothic and sinister may not be absent; Doyle's evocation of the Cornish seacoast and moors in "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot" would be at home in the Romantic novels of Blackmore or Du Maurier. (Doyle uses description with more skill than readers sometimes notice.) Attempting to comment on the individual stories can be difficult without divulging spoilers (that's particularly true in the case of "The Adventure of the Dying Detective"). I can mention that "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans" is noteworthy in the Holmes canon as being one of only two in which Holmes' brother Mycroft appears. From the beginning of the title story, set just on the eve of World War I in August 1914, it's obvious that this one deals with pre-war German espionage. Written as it was during the war, its treatment of German characters is colored by wartime attitudes towards the enemy; and in hindsight we can say that it's very unlikely that the German government was consciously planning the war since 1910, and that even its date would have been predictable to their agents! The story is also notable, though, as the only Holmes story I recall with actual explicit references to God (in two places); though Doyle wasn't a Christian, the war --and especially the death of his son in it-- tended to move his thoughts in a more spiritual direction. (Ironically, though, the hope he puts in Holmes' mouth, "...a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared," proved to be illusory; the moral and spiritual effects of the Great War on England, and the West generally, were almost entirely demoralizing.) My favorite story in the book is probably "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot," but all of them are well-written and rewarding. This edition is enhanced by an appended Selected Bibliography of Doyle's works (it fills about two and a half pages, since he wrote prolifically, including long and short fiction and nonfiction), and a four and a half page About the Author biographical note, which is worthwhile and informative. A must for Doyle fans, I'd recommend the collection to any fans of traditional mystery stories. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 04, 2020
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Jul 11, 2020
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Jul 04, 2020
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Paperback
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1579127355
| 9781579127350
| 1579127355
| 3.98
| 108,596
| Dec 19, 1938
| Sep 17, 2007
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really liked it
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Conniving, lecherous, vindictive self-server, cheating husband, verbally and emotionally abusive father, family tyrant --wealthy old Simeon Lee, by hi
Conniving, lecherous, vindictive self-server, cheating husband, verbally and emotionally abusive father, family tyrant --wealthy old Simeon Lee, by his own admission, is an impenitent liar and thief, described by one of his own sons as "the old devil." As a member of the human race, he doesn't have much to commend him, except for his money. But there's a LOT of that; he made his pile (probably shadily) in South Africa as a young man, prospecting for diamonds, and vastly added to it since by inventing and manufacturing improved mining equipment. Since he's now aged and pretty infirm, the idea of inheriting this fortune isn't exactly absent from the minds of the younger generation of his mostly estranged and not very loving (and unloved) family, all of whom he's now invited to gather for Christmas at his country mansion in England's Midlands. Sharing the joyous spirit of the holiday, however, isn't his motive. Rather, he just wants to amuse himself at their expense with malicious and sadistic head games, starting with the bombshell revelation that he's about to change his will. (And did I mention the cache of uncut diamonds that he keeps in his bedroom safe?) This is, obviously, a mystery novel, and any readers who bother to read book dedications will know already that it's a murder mystery. Dame Agatha's beloved brother-in-law, though a faithful fan of hers, had bemoaned the fact that the murders in her previous novels had been too "civilized" and dainty as to methods; he wanted "a good violent murder with lots of blood," and she good-naturedly obliged him here, in spades, and dedicated the result to him. Nor are readers familiar with genre conventions going to need three guesses as to who the victim will be. Fortunately, though, series detective Hercules Poirot, who solved an earlier case in the area (Three Act Tragedy) is spending the holiday season with his friend, the chief constable of "Middleshire," so is available to assist with the investigation. It's one that will furnish his "little grey cells" (and probably those of most readers) with a real workout! As a reader, I opened this book (which was a common read in one of my Goodreads groups) under what most mystery fans would say is a disadvantage: some years ago, I'd already seen the PBS Mystery! series adaptation of the novel, starring David Suchet as Poirot, so I knew in advance who the killer was. For me, this didn't spoil the read, since much of the pleasure was in experiencing Christie's telling of the story and admiring her artistry (then too, I'd forgotten many details of the plot and characterizations, and the PBS scriptwriters depart from the book in places). But I couldn't experience the story the way the first readers would, or enjoy trying to guess the solution. I believe, though, that this would be a real challenge; Christie did a superb job of hiding clues in plain sight and creating a seemingly insoluble puzzle. As is not uncommon in her novels, the list of suspects is finite; the scene of the murder is a country house with strictly limited ingress and egress, and the discovery of the body and arrival of the police almost immediate. The culprit has to be one of the inhabitants of the house, their guests, or their servants. But while the secret of the locked door actually yields itself up pretty quickly, the other pieces of physical and verbal evidence are mysterious and confusing in the extreme, and plausible suspects abound. This crime was uniquely ingenious, and solving it will require thinking that's way outside the box. For some mystery fans (including myself), though, a tale needs more than a challenging mental puzzle to make it a truly pleasing read; genuinely rewarding literature is about people, their personalities, needs, motivations and choices, relationships. IMO, Christie measures up here on this level as well. True, Poirot's usual foil, Capt. Hastings, is absent in this book; some readers in my group missed him, and the pair's usual relationship. Also, while Chief Inspector Japp plays an important role in the PBS adaptation, and the Poirot-Japp interactions are actually some of the best parts there, he doesn't appear in the book at all. But Christie makes up for this with a wonderfully lifelike portrayal of all of the members of this dysfunctional family, every one of them a distinct and unique individual, and draws their interactions with a realism that brings them totally to life and has you, the reader, relating to them as people. (Had Christie left murder out of the plot, she'd probably have earned credit for creating a Realist masterpiece of family drama and dynamics; but Realist critical dogma defines crime as a plot element that can't occur in "normal life." Of course, real-life crime statistics would tend to belie that, but critical dogma isn't amenable to any kind of real-life evidence.) One reviewer felt that the portrayal of Poirot here, in comparison to novels Christie wrote earlier, lacks life, depth, and color. But with all due respect (and granting that I'm much less well read than she is in the Poirot canon, and that only three Poirot novels among those I've read were written before this one), my own perception is that Christie's portrayal of the character is actually pretty consistent from book to book, and that here he comes across very much as I would have expected him to. (Of course, I consistently picture him as David Suchet.... :-) ) Despite the backdrop of the Christmas season, this is not the sort of tale that would be typical holiday fare for, say, the Hallmark Channel; it's not a feel-good seasonal read. But neither does Christie succumb to cynicism. In virtually all of her writing, she exhibits a solid moral compass and an essential optimism about life and the working of the world, even in the face of a very real human capability for evil. (The other side of the coin is a very real capability for good, and for good to triumph....) For readers who share her literary vision, I don't think this book would disappoint. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Dec 02, 2019
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Dec 10, 2019
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Dec 02, 2019
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Hardcover
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my rating |
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4.61
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really liked it
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Aug 2025
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Jul 13, 2025
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4.53
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liked it
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May 20, 2025
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Apr 13, 2025
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4.09
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really liked it
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Jan 11, 2025
not set
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Oct 30, 2024
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4.63
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really liked it
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Oct 10, 2024
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Jul 27, 2024
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4.65
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really liked it
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Aug 24, 2024
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Jul 27, 2024
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3.97
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liked it
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Apr 11, 2025
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Jun 05, 2024
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4.59
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really liked it
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Mar 27, 2024
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Dec 03, 2023
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4.42
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liked it
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May 04, 2023
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Oct 10, 2023
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4.57
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liked it
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Nov 09, 2023
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Aug 23, 2023
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4.69
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really liked it
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Sep 07, 2023
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Aug 04, 2023
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4.24
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liked it
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Aug 02, 2024
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Jul 24, 2023
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4.60
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really liked it
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Jul 09, 2023
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Jun 30, 2023
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4.53
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really liked it
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Jun 30, 2023
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Jun 04, 2023
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4.29
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liked it
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Mar 18, 2023
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Dec 19, 2022
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4.52
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really liked it
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May 15, 2022
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Mar 07, 2022
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3.93
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really liked it
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Jul 2022
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Jun 11, 2021
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3.86
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liked it
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Oct 22, 2020
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Oct 14, 2020
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3.98
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it was ok
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Dec 15, 2023
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Jul 10, 2020
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4.23
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really liked it
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Jul 11, 2020
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Jul 04, 2020
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3.98
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really liked it
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Dec 10, 2019
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Dec 02, 2019
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