I've finished one book since my last update. I'll update that plus show you a couple of books I picked up this week on my rounds; one from my Little Free Library out front of the house. I'll also provide another entry in my look at the Mystery genre, American PI's.
Just Finished
"Bony and the Kelly Gang by Australian author Arthur W. Upfield is the 25th book in his Inspector Bonaparte mystery series. Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte is a half-aboriginal police inspector. In this story he is sent undercover to an isolated community to ascertain if they had anything to do with the murder of an Excise inspector.
Bony is picked up on the side of the road by Mike Conway, one of the leaders of the community, and Bony lets on that he is on the run from the Sidney police for horse stealing. Conway offers him a job picking potatoes on the hill overlooking Cork Valley. The community consists of Conways and Kellys and others of their community. They run a bit of a shady operation, have for 100+ years, smuggling booze, not paying their taxes, sending their kids to the local school, etc. But Bony is interested only in the murder of the Excise officer.
It's a very different story, I have to say and reasonably interesting. Bony is a fascinating character, thoughtful, intelligent and physically fit. He finds himself being drawn to the community, liking them for their personalities and closeness. But at the same time he has to investigate. They are a suspicious group, placing alarms all around the perimeter and keeping tabs on any strangers. Bony earns their trust after a variety of actions and is given more responsibility. But will he be successful in his investigation.
Enjoyed my first exposure to Bony. It offered me a different culture and was an entertaining story. I've a couple of more books in the series and I look forward to learning more about Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte (Bony) (3 stars)"
Currently Reading
I'm currently enjoying The Etruscan Chimera by Lyn Hamilton, Inkspell by Cornelia Funke, Leave Me By Dying by Rosemary Aubert and The Dead Shall Not Rise by Tessa Harris. I've added the following since I completed the Bony book.
"In Italian police inspector Aurelio Zen, Michael Dibdin has given the mystery one of its most complex and compelling protagonists: a man wearily trying to enforce the law in a society where the law is constantly being bent. In this novel, Zen himself has been assigned to do some law bending. Officials in a high government ministry want him to finger someone--anyone--for the murder of an eccentric billionaire, whose corrupt dealings enriched some of the most exalted figures in Italian politics.
But Oscar Burolo's murder would seem to be not just unsolvable but impossible. The magnate was killed on a heavily fortified Sardinian estate, where every room was monitored by video cameras. Those cameras captured Burolo's grisly death, but not the face of his killer. And that same killer, elusive, implacable, and deranged, may now be stalking Zen. Inexorable in its suspense, superbly atmospheric, Vendetta is further proof of Dibdin's mastery of the crime novel."
New Books
I found one that interested me that had been placed in my little library box out front and also picked up two at 2nd Page Books in Courtenay.
"Late one night, a seventeen-year-old African American foster child Tanya Morgan falls from the overpass above San Francisco’s Stockton tunnel, landing on the windshield of a car driving on the street below. She is killed instantly. But did she fall...or was she pushed?
Homicide has recently been accused of dragging its feet in identifying suspects in cases where the victims are African American so the case becomes front-page news by the end of the investigation’s first day. Rushing to produce a collectable suspect, inspectors focus their attention on a naive and idealistic young man named Greg Treadway. Greg is a middle school teacher with the Teach for America program and a volunteer as a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) for foster children, where his client is Tanya’s twin brother Shawn. At first, the only thing connecting him to Tanya’s death is the fact that they shared a meal earlier that night. But soon enough, elements of that story seem to fall apart...and lawyer Dismas Hardy’s daughter Rebecca finds herself drawn into the defense of young man who is perhaps not all that he had originally appeared to be."
"Someone is passing around an alarming quantity of counterfeit bank notes. Scotland Yard has asked Blunt's brilliant detectives to ferret out the criminals. This, and other stories featuring the detective duo Tommy and Tuppence Beresford are contained in this volume."
"It’s summer in Paris and two tourists have been murdered in Père Lachaise cemetery in front of Jim Morrison’s grave. The cemetery is locked down and put under surveillance, but the killer returns, flitting in and out like a ghost, and breaks into the crypt of a long-dead Moulin Rouge dancer. In a bizarre twist, he disappears under the cover of night with part of her skeleton.
One of the dead tourists is an American and the other is a woman linked to a suspected terrorist; so the US ambassador sends his best man and the embassy’s head of security—Hugo Marston—to help the French police with their investigation.
When the thief breaks into another crypt at a different cemetery, stealing bones from a second famed dancer, Hugo is stumped. How does this killer operate unseen? And why is he stealing the bones of once-famous can-can girls?
Hugo cracks the secrets of the graveyards but soon realizes that old bones aren’t all this killer wants."
My Ongoing Look at the Mystery Genre - American PI's #16
In my last entry I looked at Ross Macdonald - Lew Archer. Today, I'll take a look at another crusty PI.
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| Robert B. Parker |
"Robert B. Parker is one of those mystery writers that I had never thought I'd read. Not for any particular reason, I don't think. Then a few years back, my wife and I watched a few of the Jesse Stone movies starring Tom Selleck and I discovered that there were a series of books by Parker on which the movies were based. I started collecting the books but have yet tried the first. I also discovered that he wrote a series on which another successful TV series was based, that being the Spenser series. I bought the first book, The Godwulf Manuscript recently and for some reason it was the first Parker book I read.
Spenser is a private eye in Boston, Mass. He is hired by Boston University to find a stolen manuscript, the titled Godwulf Manuscript, which is being held for ransom. Based on some info provided by the university security officer, Spenser checks out a female student, Terry Orchard, who is a member of a political group on campus, SCACE, who he thinks might have something to do with the theft. This leads quickly to murder, Terry Orchard's boyfriend, for which Miss Orchard is suspected. The Orchard family, a rich Boston family, also hire Spenser to prove that Terry is innocent.
So now you've got the plot, which leads to the mob, drug dealing on campus, threats to Spenser, more murders. It's a full, entertaining story. Spenser is a great character, somewhat of a throwback to those great noir detectives like Sam Spade and Lew Archer, but with his own great qualities. He's big and strong, handsome (the ladies seem to like him), a wise-cracker, but also a guy who enjoys cooking and even knows who Marcuse is. This was a great introduction to what I hope will be a great series because I plan to keep reading it. (4 stars)"
"Appie Knoll is the kind of suburb where kids grow up right. But something is wrong. Fourteen-year-old Kevin Bartlett disappears. Everyone thinks he's run away -- until the comic strip ransom note arrives. It doesn't take Spenser long to get the picture -- an affluent family seething with rage, a desperate boy making strange friends...friends like Vic Harroway, body builder. Mr. Muscle is Spenser's only lead and he isn't talking...except with his fists. But when push comes to shove, when a boy's life is on the line, Spenser can speak that language too."
"Hawk wants Spenser to wage war on a street gang. Susan wants Spenser to move in with her. Either way, Spenser's out of his element. So why not risk both?"
The remaining books in this series can be found at this link.
So there you go.. Have a great Easter weekend!
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