Review: Memory in Death

Memory in Death by J.D. Robb
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Eve Dallas, NYPD Homicide Lieutenant, had a really tough childhood, one that culminated in her murder of her father and subsequent placement in the foster system. Her years there added to the trauma that still gives her nightmares. With the help of her handsome, billionaire adoring Irish husband she has learned to handle them. For the most part she is a hard-nosed, no nonsense investigator , whose own past is a none issue in her work. That is until one of her foster mothers makes an appearance at her office. Tracy Lombard was one of the most abusive of the adults with whom Dallas was placed.

Her she is, in Dallas' domain, feigning happiness at reconnecting with one of her charges--a favorite, one much beloved, according to Tracy. Not quite the way Dallas remembers the events. In no uncertain terms she makes clear to Tracy that she does not want to join her and her family for dinner, nor does she ever want to lay eyes on Lombard again.

But Tracy Lombard has ulterior motives for tracking down Dallas. Dollar signs that dance in her head when she thinks about Rourke, Dallas' husband and in short order she makes her way to his office to shake him down. For 2 million dollars she will not reveal Dallas' unsavory background to the press and thereby to the Police Department and to the people of the city Dallas serves. If she thought the shaken Dallas was adamant in her refusal to reconnect, she hasn't heard anything until Rourke lets her have it with both guns. No money and get thee back to Texas or he will see to it she finds her way out of the city and maybe off the planet.

Problem handled? Well, no. Dallas wants to confront Lombard at her hotel to make sure she understands just where she stands. Rourke goes with her to the hotel the next day and a whole new problem rears its ugly head. Tracy Lombard is dead, a bloody mess on the floor of her hotel room, dead! And though Dallas feels absolutely nothing in the face of it, she knows that she must find out how Tracy lost her life--and if it was murder, who caused it.

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Review: The Silent Patient

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Alicia Berenson murdered her husband; she shot him in the head multiple times with a shotgun. That was six years ago and she has resided at a Home for mental patients, The Grove, ever since the trial. Alicia was found covered in blood standing in front of a strange painting she'd completed after the murder. She was an artist and the painting was to be the last " word " she'd spoken. She said nothing when arrested, nothing during the trial that resulted in a plea of diminished responsibility and her confinement at the Grove, and nothing since that commitment.

A young psychotherapist, Theo Faber, was fascinated by the press coverage of the murder and even went to the gallery in which her final painting was exhibited. The story and the painting haunted him and he wished he could meet its artist but he was working at another institution. But as chance would have it, a position opened at The Grove and Theo applied and was hired. At last, he would have an opportunity to try to treat the silent Alicia. Her background resonated with him, since his childhood and hers had some similarities that he wished to explore.

And so begins the interaction between patient and therapist, which becomes ever more intense and personal. Disturbing really and I felt a nagging feeling that there was more than this random connection between the two. When the twist is revealed, it is a shock on the one hand and somehow not surprising on another. The revelations of Alicia's background and her relationships as well as the story of Theo's life both keep the reader going, trying to figure out whether or not Alicia killed Gabriel. If she did, why? He was the love of her life and that life seemed so perfect. If she didn't, then who did and why? But even more confounding, why isn't Alicia Berenson speaking??

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Review: The Bandit Queens

The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Having thought the caste system has been outlawed in India, it was surprising to find this tale set in current time. Still, the system is so very confusing, not the basis necessarily, but the strange differences in economic situations that can exist in the various levels--a Brahmin, the highest caste can grow up with no money, starving, dependent upon others, while a Dalit, an untouchable can be quite affluent.

Besides the caste system there are differences in the culture of Muslim Indians and Hindu Indians that are very significant. A Hindu widow for example cannot remarry, is excluded from all celebrations etc while a Muslim woman has great freedom as a widow.

Both of these conditions are significant in the story but of greater importance is the position of women in society. Although they are eligible for loans that men are not, their husbands can steal those funds or the monies the women earn from any small business they might set up with the loans. The men are not to be punished for women and their funds are the possessions of the husbands. Wives can be sexually molested or beaten--if by their husbands there is no punishment and not a great deal of punishment of men not their husbands. Needless to say many women are not content living this way. And sometimes these women take matters into their own hands..

One such woman is Geeta, whose husband disappeared five years before the book begins. His body has never been found but the villagers assume Geeta killed him. In general, she is a loner and is friendless. She does have some leadership qualities and so she has been allowed into one of the loan groups which meets once a month to pay the loan man. It is this group of women who are the focus of the story. As with any group, especially of women, there is jealousy, gossip, cliquish behavior, and in time murder and blackmail. At times, convoluted and dangerous, at others hilariously inept, these women struggle to have a voice and self-determination that the culture and traditions of thousands of years has denied them. In the end, old resentments and past degradations and cruelty are sorted. The village is changed in most cases for the better and the women become a wonderful group of bonobos!

This review is of a copy provided by BookBrowse for discussion on their website.

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Review: Violeta

Violeta by Isabel Allende
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

While not being one of those readers who decides to read books that follow the theme of the month, this one fits March, womens' month, perfectly. Violeta is born in Chile to wealthy parents during the 1920 influenza pandemic. She is pampered and surrounded by loving family, parents, a brother, aunts and a governess whom she adores. There are older siblings as well but they are so much older they are out of the home and not particularly close to her or Jose Antonio, her brother. When the Depression strikes the Del Valle family and her father commits suicide, the rest of them move to a rural area and the home of Miss Taylor's lover's family, the Rivas. Although Jose Antonio is madly in love with Josephine Taylor she is in a relationship with Theresa Rivas. Through the many years covered in this book Jose retains the engagement ring he bought for Miss Taylor.

Which brings us to the length of the story. It covers Violeta life until her death at 100 in 2020, the beginning, as she points out, of yet another pandemic! It is written in the form of a memoir that in time is revealed to be a long letter to Violeta's grandson. Her life as a business woman at a time when women were to be wives and mothers, housekeepers not independently wealthy individuals. She is headstrong and emotional and passionate. Married to a non-Chilean, a German , at a fairly young age. Fabian is madly in love with her but is stoic and unemotional. She is content and expects to be with him until death. That is until julian Bravo comes along and she leaves him for the wild and daring pilot who sweeps her off her feet at first sight.

Theirs is a long involvement, tempetuous, damaging, at times physically abusive which produces two children, a girl, Nieves and a boy, Juan Martin. It is during this time that Violeta becomes more aware of the events occuring in her country and the world. The military juntas of South America, the poverty of her fellow Chileans, the abusive conditions under which some women live, the corruption of government and the rise of organized crime. All of these things we see and hear through the eyes of Violeta, the narrator.

How she reacts to these events. How her children's lives develop and the affects those developments have on her. The birth of her grandson, the evolution of her relationship with Bravo, the new lovers who enter her life as she ages--all of these are revealed. And in the end her loss as time goes on of her family members and friends, her development of a fund for abused women, her philanthropy and her devotion to Camilo, her grandson to whom this letter is written. It is a long letter about a long life but it is a wonderful life, a typical life--there is love, hate, loss, mistakes, revenge, devotion, success and failure--and the longer it goes on the more is lost until in the end, there is just Violeta on her deathbed, Camilo tending her along with one last member of the Rivas household,, the granddaughter of the original housekeeper.

Loved it all--the history, the characters, and Violeta, only 20 years older than me. I felt as though I'd moved into her skin there was so much of her I could relate to. At times I wanted to pull the reins and stop her taking a path I knew would be dangerous or foolhardy, but I could not. I had to let the story go, shaking my head either in sorrow or else with laughter because I'd been as foolish as she at times. The book is wonderful for anyone to read but, I think, will be most appealing to women of a certain age because it will not be so much history of another time as a story of a time through which they have lived.

Theirs is

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Review: G is for Gumshoe

G is for Gumshoe by Sue Grafton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While being a PI can be fun it can also be quite dangerous, especially when one of your investigations results in jail time for the subject and he puts out a hit on you. While working on her new case, finding the elderly mother of her client, the hitman comes uncomfortably close to fulfilling his contract. Though it isn't her style, Kinsey is sufficiently cowed that she contacts another PI, with whom she's worked in the past, to be her bodyguard.

Dietz is a good bodyguard, but his constant presence and control of her environment and movements drives the independent Kinsey crazy. I doesn't get any easier when the two find themselves attracted to each other in a less than professional way.

There is a H is for Homicide, so everything works out fairly well in the end.

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Review: The 6:20 Man

The 6:20 Man by David Baldacci
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Not sure if I've read any Baldacci before but have wanted to so picked this one up because of its setting rather than anything else. Nothing like a commuter train into the City at an ungodly hour in the morning. Hopefully, not too many of the riders are former Army Rangers who are working in Wall St as a self imposed penance for an act not particularly becoming for an Officer and a Gentleman. More logically than Sex and the City or Friends, Travis Devine, is sharing a townhouse in Mt Kisco rather than a Manhattan roomy apartment and his salary barely covers the rent, food and train fare so his social life is not very exciting.

With the death of an office colleague with whom he had a one night stand, that rather mundane life is going to get much more stimulating. He has received a rather strange email telling him of the woman's death. No one else has gotten such a personal notification and the sender's address is strange looking. Next thing he knows Travis is being personally approached by detectives at his station in Mt Kisco, their interest in him rather intense. Do they suspect him of her murder?

Before long he is further approached by someone who appears to be a Fed and knows all about Travis' military history. Threatened with prosecution and probable jail sentence, Travis agrees to get some information about the financial institution where he and the deceased worked together as analysts. The the background info he uncovers is convoluted and confusing and the deaths keep mounting up. What is going on and how is he going to keep himself from being among the dead?

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Review: The Black Book

The Black Book by Ian Rankin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Loved John Hannah in the series, did not like Stott, his replacement because he was too old for my mental image of Rebus and am looking forward to the new series, though this guy seems too young.

If ever I go to Edinburgh I will forever be thinking of all the nefarious underworld goings on and never feel safe in any pub or restaurant. The place is teeming with horrible people who speak in a dialect I'll never understand. As a matter of fact, Hannah gave me problems in the program--thank goodness for cc or I'd be truly lost. And truly lost is what Ian Rankin keeps his readers. Rebus is constantly running all over town and environs and never seems to get enough pieces to any puzzle he's trying to solve. What he does learn at any turn makes me feel as though I'm doing a jigsaw but it isn't the one this bit belongs to and I hate jigsaw puzzles! But, the characters and places are so intriguing and Rebus, himself so Columbo-like, that I keep subjecting myself to this torture.

In the end, the result is always satisfactory but I feel so exhausted I swear i'm not going to read the next one, until I do. Sigh

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Review: Origin in Death

Origin in Death by J.D. Robb
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

2059 New York City--though only 35 years from now, hoping this book is not what our future holds. Between the threat of AI creating a " reality " difficult to discern, the idea of Quiet Birth is enough to make me happy that I can't last that long at my age. Does make me worry about what the future holds for our children, though. Must admit, I like a lot of the automatic driving vehicles that would allow me to get around more easily than current vehicles do at my age.

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Review: Down a Dark Road

Down a Dark Road by Linda Castillo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What do you do if your pre-teen crush, who's been found guilty of murdering his wife, escapes from prison after two years and takes his five children captive in their farmhouse? Joseph King swears he did not kill his wife, Naomi and wants his old friend, Sheriff Kate Burkholder, to reopen the case and find out the truth. With memories of the young man he once was running through her mind, Katie starts nosing around.

What she does is rile a hornets' nest and almost loses her life in the process. What she finds is that more than one person played a part in the death of Naomi King!

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Review: Hatchet Island: A Novel

Hatchet Island: A Novel by Paul Doiron
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Not sure if, in each of these 13 installments of the life of Mike Bowditch, Doiron has covered all the biases, perversions and socio-economic statuses that exist in Maine but there are not many I can think of that he hasn't! Will have to wait until June to see what he comes up with in episode 14.

This time around we have the obsessive behavior of some environmentalists who have been granted the exclusive use of a State owned island to protect the nesting grounds of several species of sea birds. The lead researcher is going slightly mad because the number of birds is rapidly diminishing and yet she is willing to do almost anything to retain the donations coming from the rich folks who have moved into several of the other islands, using their money to create their own feudal estates among the lobstermen etc of the area.

Of course, there has to be a law enforcement officer or two who seem less than professional and therefore may, possibly, be part of the crime committed. Oh, yes, the crime--while the lead researcher is mysteriously off the bird sanctuary, someone has brutally murdered two of her interns, and posed them for pictures. The third intern, Black by the way, has disappeared and may have survived. Ah, is he the murderer?? Naturally, one of the investigators with no evidence is sure he is, but naturally too, this is a racist supposition as Mike and Stacy are swift to deduce.

Yes, Stacy and Mike are back together again and this time it seems for good. To the point, that having headed out for a romantic camping trip on one of the other islands, they have stopped off at the bird sanctuary. Stacy's ex-college roommate, Kendra has asked them to drop by and for Mike to bring his gun and badge. Kendra is nervous about Maeve's deteriorating mind and about some fishermen who have begun to stalk around the island. After meeting the other two interns, Garrett and Hillary, the lovebirds head off to a nearby island. During the night, the sound of a gunshot in the vicinity of Baker Island brings them back in the morning to the site of the horrible massacre.f

Soon, the two of them are assistants of sorts in the investigation that soon involves a strange photographer who stages death scenes for his works, his aggressive wife, the photographer's assistant and his family, several lobstermen of varying ages and their families. Making sure all bases of diversity are covered the new State trooper is a Hispanic woman from not Maine. Don't want to give away the specific type of perversion in this one, since it is the motivating factor in all that ensues.

BTW, Shadow who was left at home is doing fine and has allowed Stacy to sit next to him and pet his head without tearing off her arm. Must be she will say yes when Mike asks.

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Review: Dream Town

Dream Town by Lee Goldberg
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of my favorite authors for characterization and descriptive locations. His books read with as much action and realism as his TV shows. Eve Ronin just cannot help but get on her superiors' nerves but she is thorough and dogged in her determination to solve any crime that comes her way. Duncan, her poor, more experienced, soon to retire partner tries his best to rope her in to no avail. He is so concerned about her survival that he postponed his retirement after their last case and finds himself riding herd on her in Hidden Hills, a gated community of the rich with a Western theme! Apparently, such a place truly exists though Goldberg jazzed it up a bit with a resident deputy sheriff who rides a horse, wears a stetson and has his own little hoosegow on the estate. I instantly disliked and distrusted this character upon his appearance. Even his name, Amos Tatum, annoyed me.

But the most annoying characters were the Kardashian wannabes, the Winslows. Daddy is a retired film cowboy living in his fictional world, his heavily sculpted and endowed wife, and two obnoxious children. His eldest, Kitty, has just been shot in the face in her bedroom in her glamourous guest cottage. And her gazzillion dollar engagement ring has gone missing. When Eve and Duncan show up to investigate, Tatum is there to assure them he has it all in hand in HIS community. Eve will have nothing to do with yet another deputy thinking he'll try riding rough shod over her. And so it begins. Who killed Kitty--the darling of the reality Life with the Winslows reality show? If only hers were the only dead body our heroine will encounter before this saga ends.

Interesting, too, is the behind the scenes of how TV shows are filmed, where they are filmed, who does what behind the scenes and the politics of production. I'll never view a TV program the same again. Neither will you!

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Review: Dead by Dawn

Dead by Dawn by Paul Doiron
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the Doiron book that should have won a literary prize! The best, most exciting, fastest reading book in the series so far. Don't usually like books in which the plot moves back and forth between time periods but this time the plot device makes the action move with even more urgency. It takes place in only one day but Mike and Shadow have some day!

Starts out simple enough--taking Shadow to the vet for a check-up and stopping by to visit a woman who's sent him a note asking him to review a closed case. Definitely, not how it ends. But then nothing with Mike Bowditch is simple--from his relationships with women to his obsession with a wolf. And while Rambo may be, in Mike's mind, at a moment of great crises, " a bullshit macho fantasy", he has nothing on old MB!!!

Love Doiron's sense of humor, his style and his way with words--I, too, thought the professor looked like a " pompous ass" ! Just from reading his description.

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Review: Extravagant Death

Extravagant Death by Charles Finch
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

At last Charles Lennox has made his way to the colonies and is astounded by the opulence of the monied class! Having seen some of the old world homes of those that preceded the American barons of industry, I'd say they did a good job of emulating them. Even to the point of acquiring all the pieces of those places that were able to be transported across the pond. What is more to the point is the fact that, having fought a war to dissolve an attachment to a monarchy that they found less than democratic, the descendents of the warriors who won that freedom set about establishing a pseudo-royalty along Fifth Avenue and the East coast of the country. Not having any family titles to hand down through the generations many of the nouveau riche went about buying them as well.

Though Charles, himself, seemingly could care less about this societal discrimination on either side of the Atlantic, Lady Jane and Mrs Astor both enjoyed the society it established. But, in the beginning, Lady Jane is left at home with the children, as Charles has embarked upon a Dickensian tour of the States. As he is making his way from New York City to Boston his train is intercepted by the private train of one of the Knickerbocker families of New York, one William Schermerhorn. It would seem that a young lady attending the season at Newport, Rhode Island has been murdered. As Lennox is an internationally well known detective ( and though, not said, a man of some standing in British society ), Schermerhorn has summoned him to Newport to investigate.

Naturally, Charles resents this interference with his mission on behalf of his Queen, but eventually agrees to make the detour for a day or so. And thus ensues Charles' introduction to America's idle rich and naturally, though the invitations are highly prized, obtains entry into Mrs Astor's fabulous party of the season. Oh, and he does manage to identify the murderer among other secrets that even the very rich hide from each other.

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Review: The Litigators

The Litigators by John Grisham
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

David Zinc has had it with the long hours and stress of the high end law firm in which he is one of many minions, so he walks out one morning, goes to a local bar and gets shit-faced and wanders into a store front, ambulance chasing firm made up of two aging lawyers, one who does not much of anything and the other, a recovering drunk, who chases down clients in ways quite seedy.

Welcome to Finley and Figg, a boutique law firm, or so the partners call it. They quickly take David on and he joins them and their secretary, Rochelle in what becomes a rather complex lawsuit against a pharmaceutical company. It is to be heard in Federal court--and none of the three of them have ever appeared in this court. indeed, none of them have any experience in such a suit and they are going to face a battery of high-priced lawyers employed by the drug giant.

While the intricacies of legal maneuvering that takes place in such a situation are mind-boggling, what is really eye opening is the process by which a new drug is the testing it undergoes and the approval process that the FDA uses to allow its use. It makes me very happy that at 81 I take no medications or supplements because I have refused them and, so far, am quite healthy, thank you. Side-effects don't appeal to me and one doctor told me that I'm probably as healthy as I am because I DON"T use any medications. Quite the revelations in this book!!

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Review: The Girl in Cabin 13

The Girl in Cabin 13 by A.J. Rivers
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Perp is Easy;Motive is Tough

Within seconds of the character's appearance I had the murderer pegged! Still the investigation for Emma to realize who done it and, more importantly for me,why was worth the read. Would have given the book a five if it had been harder to finger the Who.

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Review: One Last Lie

One Last Lie by Paul Doiron
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The books are getting better--more focused and more complex at the same time. Also more devoted to Bowditch and his work as a Warden Inspector, although this time he's not on official business. Charley has gone missing and Ora calls upon Mike to find him.

This time the focus is truly on the Franco-Americans and Native peoples of the Fort Kent area--right on the Canadian border pretty much at the nothernmost point of the Maine border. There are plenty of shady characters for Mike to interview in an effort to find Charley and discover why he has disappeared. Dorion also throws in a couple of Haitians so he can make a point or two about how iCE and Border Patrol activies have increased on this border since 9/11 and just to let everyone know that Mike isn't totally out of the loop of current global affairs, there are are a couple of references to Harry and Meghan!

Love life still in flux--Stacy is back , sorta and Dani is getting distant, sorta. Not too much of that thank goodness. I'm rooting for Stacy, BTW.. Worked with fellow female Customs' inspectors with a chip on the shoulder relative to men. Dani sees them as competitors and has ambition -she also doesn't have a real trust of men--note her remark about the rejection of the Florida pilot's application for the Maine Warden opening. No children, either? Not partner material, at all!IMHO!

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Review: Almost Midnight

Almost Midnight by Paul Doiron
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Best one so far--more warden investigator than immature boyfriend. Perhaps the situation with Shadow is what appealed most--two reasons, like wolves and my cat is called Shadow--lol Drugs in prisons and involvement of the so called keepers is nothing new but Billy and Aimee Cronk and the Cronkets are always interesting. The passing involvement with the Amish could have been left out--read Linda Castillo if you want Amish mysteries. And while Zane and Indigo were kind of interesting, again not really essential to the story, although they made for a good solution to one mystery.

Dani is the newest disaster--lol

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Review: Roman Blood

Roman Blood by Steven Saylor
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If the author had chosen to simply tell the story without superfluous embellishment it may have been told in less than 401 pages. While the descriptions of Rome, the city, its inhabitants, its customs, its political maneuvering were interesting they were so repetitive that the text became as boring as the ancient words of Cicero hated by many enforced students of Latin classes in the modern world.

Sulla, unfortunately, sounds so much like the dreaded next Republican candidate for our Presidency that it strikes terror in the heart of this voter.

The mystery of whether or not the victim was murdered by his son is intriguing but getting to the heart of it was a long and convoluted journey through a sludge of overwrought prose. The best part of the book was the last chapters in which the trial is described and the later developments following its judgement.

Reader, beware, to read this book requires lengthy days of trudging through the unnecessary length of its words.

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Review: Stay Hidden

Stay Hidden by Paul Doiron
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

These books keep bringing me back not so much because of the mystery that Mike finds himself investigating but because of the settings in which he finds himself. Living in Vermont with many stays all over NH and Maine, I find myself recognizing the people, the places , the attitudes. In this installment Mike is on an island off the coast of Bangor. The two days of constant fog is so well described I could smell the air, feel the damp coldness and suffer the almost claustrophic eerieness of the lack of visibility and the distortion of sounds and direction. And, oh, the attitudes--Mike is a native born maniac but on the Island he is an outsider--not to be trusted, not to be included. My husband is a 7th generation Vermonter but when we moved to mid-Vermont from the Canadian borderlands the locals took a long time to accept him as " not away " and the men in the local grocery store only acknowledged me if I was with him, never alone, and i was for years, Bill's wife. Yup, New England and its people are surely like the people in Doiron's books. Very relateable.

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Review: Murder at the Merton Library

Murder at the Merton Library by Andrea Penrose
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This series is so engrossing. In addition to a murder mystery the books always have historical information about the advances in science and engineering that took place in the 19th century and the development of commerce and business that was coupled with it.

Here there are engineers in all the major Western countries attempting to develop a steam engine that would be capable of driving vessels across the wide and wild waters of the oceans. Steam engines in rivers were well known and used in America and parts of Europe. The complexity of an engine sturdy enough to withstand the strength of turbulence during storms and the need for huge amounts of fuel for such long voyages were daunting challenges to those trying to design such an engine. As the competition in the labs progressed the need for funds, ever a need in such endeavors, led in some instances to fraudulent schemes to wrest money from investors knowing there would be no payoff to them.

So, with the murder of a friend of his deceased brother, Wrex and Charlotte, the Weasels and the rest of the inner circle find themselves not only on the trail of his murderer but also embroiled in the larger events surrounding the advances in the age of Steam

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Review: Knife Creek

Knife Creek by Paul Doiron
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Yahoo--Bowditch is getting more mature--still a bit impetuous and gets himself in trouble--but more thoughtful and observant. What starts out as a simple morning feral pig hunt with his live-in girlfriend, Stacy, turns into the discovery of a new born infant's body left in a wallow to be eaten by the pigs. In short order, Mike has disobeyed an order from the Maine State Troopers to leave the investigation to them. He approaches a near by home inhabited by a couple of strange women wearing bright red wigs. The younger woman seems familiar to him, somehow but he has no way to insist on entering the home and must leave further investigation to the Troopers after all.

Ah, but when he and the Troopers return the next day, the house has been abandoned and jerry-rigged to explode destroying in and any trace of its inhabitants. By now, Mike is convinced the younger woman is a UNH student who has been missing for the last four years. Further, Mike thinks she is probably the mother of the infant left so inhumanely as food for the feral pigs.

And so the mystery begins with the usual twists and turns and strange rural Maine characters, teams of investigators, including a retired Maine Police detective obsessed with proving the missing girl is dead and prosecuting the young rich guy last known to have seen her as her murderer. His relationships with Stacy and Dani Tate, a former warden who is now a Trooper and who has had a crush on him, also play a part in the story. Fingers crossed Stacy takes a powder--just my opinion--lol

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Review: Hemlock

Hemlock by Susan Wittig Albert
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It's been a long time since I've read China Bayles--there was a time when I read them as fast as they came out, but got tired of the series and needed a break. This appears to be the last in the series or at least the last published and I decided to go back.
What a refreshing change--China is on her own in North Carolina. She chats with her husband a couple of times and there are references to Caitie and Ruby but the cast of characters is totally new so the geographic location is Eastern Appalachian mountains in place of Texas Hill Country, there is snow and icy roads and small town Southern police and sheriffs.
China has flown in to help out an acquaintance who is the director of a private library, which is in poor shape. The books have no organization, there is no directory of holdings. One tome, however, is missing and the reason that is obvious is because it was kept in a locked, sort of, glass case and it isn't there! A herbal dating back to the 18th Century, incredibly valuable and written, etched and hand colored by a woman. Most unusual. China's friend, Dorothea and her young assistant, Jenna are at the top of the list of suspects. Dorothea has asked her friend to come East to try to locate the book and Jenna is writing a novel based on the life story of the author of The Curious Herbal.
The two plot lines are interesting and the addition of one murder, one suicide and one shooting only enhance the story. Add to that interesting locals, including a slightly ditzy parrot lady and the book just flies along. Glad I came back to finish the series.

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Review: Murder on the Edge

Murder on the Edge by Bruce Beckham
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

For some reason this book was hard to get through--maybe because it was so convoluted and seemingly unsolvable. Still, as the murders piled up and the victims not only did not seem to be rock climbers nor hikers but also seemed unconnected, the mystery was intriguing. When the case finally breaks it is as sudden and surprising to the reader as to the detectives who doggedly investigated it.

I'm not sure what Jones sees in Skelgill but I like her and Leigton. Skelgill gives me a headache.

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Review: An Irish Country Yuletide

An Irish Country Yuletide by Patrick Taylor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've had this book for almost a year but just did not want to read it because Patrick Taylor is not continuing the series. Having read them all, it was hard to face the end of the series. His reasoning is sound--Ballybucklebo is a wonderful country village in which there is no Catholic/Protestant strife. Indeed, the Catholic priest and Presbyterian minister can be found at each other's services at times and they play golf together on Mondays. It is a place with normal gossip, sometimes neighborly disagreements but more often than not a place in which everyone is willing to help and support each other whenever illness, sadness or financial struggles appear.

There is also the wheels of time in which people die, others marry, sometimes romances bomb, and babies are born. The inhabitants are true individuals with three-dimensional development and the reader loves, admires, dislikes, laughs at and laughs with many of them. Dr Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly is the initial focus of the series and we see him as a medical student,a young naval officer, a new husband, a heart-breakingly devastated widower, and a happy man with a woman who was a love of his younger self who becomes his second wife. In the process, he becomes the doctor in Ballybucklebo living at #1 with is dog, kitten and housekeeper, Kinky. She is wonderful--a widow from Cork who keeps him in line cooks incredible meals. In time, she too, gets married but continues taking care of him and his young assistant, Barry Laverty. And, too, we watch Barry mature, adjust to life in a small town, marry, buy a home, have a child and become a partner in the practice.

As you can see, the reader becomes a resident and over 20 to 25 years becomes a member of the fabric and family. So difficult to leave. Yet, as said earlier, Taylor picked a good time to end the story for he did not want to delve into the troubles that raged in Ireland. He did not want to bring them to Ballybucklebo and it could not have been avoided so he ended the stories.

This Yuletide book sat on the table and finally, reluctantly, at this Yuletide I picked it up to read and say goodbye. It is set in 1965--after some books in the series and before some others. Because of this I gave it only 4 stars. Perhaps it deserves 5 since having read the whole series I felt as though, like Kinky, I had the sight--I am fey--I could see into the future of some characters. For example, Fingle's brother, Lars, meets the sister of the Marquis, John MacNeill, for the first time at the O'Reilly's Christmas evening gathering. But, I know what happens to Lars and Myrna in the future--lol



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