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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