Night 2 of the Democratic Debates

Well, here I sit watching the 2nd night of the debates. It's already a bit scrappier than last night. oh, here they go, everybody wants to have a say... lol. Now children, please behave. Let Kamala speak! Oh, that was good. America doesn't want to witness a food fight, they want to have food on their tables.. *Bazinga*

So, while I'm watching, let's do a bit of an update. On Tuesday the missus flew over to England to visit family so it's me and the pups for the next little while. Yesterday the dogs and I took a drive around the local Little Free Libraries. I dropped off a few of the books I've already read and also found a few books. I also had a book arrive in the mail. I'll update that and also continue with my look at the Mystery Genre - American Cops.

So while Savannah Guthrie and her co-hosts try to control this unruly group of Democrats, let's take a look at books.

New Books

1. DeKok and Murder on the Menu by A.C. Baantjer (Inspector DeKok #1). I've read a couple of these mysteries set in Amsterdam and have enjoyed. Now to start at the beginning.










"On an old menu from the Amsterdam Hotel-Restaurant De Poort van Eden (Eden's Gate) is found the complete, signed confession of a murder. The perpetrator confesses to the killing of a named blackmailer. DeKok and Vledder follow the trail of the menu and soon more victims are found and DeKok and Vledder are in deadly danger themselves. Although the murder was committed in Amsterdam, the case brings them to Rotterdam, Edam and Maastricht, too."

2. Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings (The Belgariad #1).












"Long ago, so the Storyteller claimed, the evil God Torak drove men and Gods to war. But Belgarath the Sorcerer led men to reclaim the Orb that protected men of the West. So long as it lay at Riva, the prophecy went, men would be safe.

But that was only a story, and Garion did not believe in magic dooms, even though the dark man without a shadow had haunted him for years. Brought up on a quiet farm by his Aunt Pol, how could he know that the Apostate planned to wake dread Torak, or that he would be led on a quest of unparalleled magic and danger by those he loved—but did not know?

For a while, his dreams of innocence were safe, untroubled by knowledge of his strange heritage. For a little while…

Thus begins the first book of The Belgariad, a magnificent epic of immense scope set against a history of seven thousand years of the struggles of Gods and Kings and men—of strange lands and events—of fate and a prophecy that must be fulfilled!"

3. The Shadow District by Arnaldur Indridason (Reykjavik Wartime Mystery #1). I've read some of Indridason's Detective Erlendur mystery series. I'm looking forward to trying this other series.










"A 90-year-old man is found dead in his bed, smothered with his own pillow.

On his desk the police find newspaper cuttings about a murder case dating from the Second World War, when a young woman was found strangled behind Reykjavík’s National Theatre.

Konrád, a former detective, is bored with retirement and remembers the crime. He grew up in ‘the shadow district’, a rough neighborhood bordered by the National Theatre and an abattoir. Why would someone be interested in that crime now? He starts his own unofficial inquiry.

Alternating between Konrád’s investigation and the original police inquiry, we discover that two girls had been attacked in oddly similar circumstances. Did the police arrest the wrong man? How are these cases linked across the decades? And who is the old man?"

4. The Skull Beneath the Skin by P.D. James (Cordelia Gray #2). James' Adam Dalgliesh mystery series is one of my favorites. There are two books in her Cordelia Gray PI series.










"Private detective Cordelia Gray is invited to the sunlit island of Courcy to protect the vainly beautiful actress Clarissa Lisle from veiled threats on her life. Within the rose red walls of a fairy-tale castle, she finds the stage is set for death."

5. The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters. I have previously read Waters' Fingersmith and it was an interesting piece of historical fiction.











"It is 1922, and London is tense. Ex-servicemen are disillusioned; the out-of-work and the hungry are demanding change. And in South London, in a genteel Camberwell villa—a large, silent house now bereft of brothers, husband, and even servants—life is about to be transformed, as impoverished widow Mrs. Wray and her spinster daughter, Frances, are obliged to take in lodgers.

With the arrival of Lilian and Leonard Barber, a modern young couple of the “clerk class,” the routines of the house will be shaken up in unexpected ways. Little do the Wrays know just how profoundly their new tenants will alter the course of Frances’s life—or, as passions mount and frustration gathers, how far-reaching, and how devastating, the disturbances will be."

The debate is much feistier tonight. Hands waving, me, me, take me next... And people running on with their answers.. lol.. But still a good group. Go Kamala!!! We're about to start the second half with new hosts, 'Sleepy Eyed' Chuck Todd (sorry about that, consider a badge of honor to be mocked by the dumb doofus currently in the White House) and Rachel Maddow.

My Ongoing Look at the Mystery Genre - American Cops Part 7
In my last entry I looked at Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch mystery series.

Jeffery Deaver

1. Jeffery Deaver - Lincoln Rhymes. I will highlight another series of Deaver's in my next post. Deaver was born in Illinois in 1950 and has been a prolific writer for years. I will focus on his Lincoln Rhymes forensic crime series in this post. I bought my first book, The Bone Collector, while I was on the way to watching the movie and read a fair bit of it before it even started. I've since read a number of the books in this series, each as enjoyable as the last. Since 1997 he has written 14 books in this series.

a. The Bone Collector.

"In his most gripping thriller yet, Jeffery Deaver takes readers on a terrifying ride into two ingenious minds...that of a physically challenged detective and the scheming killer he must stop. The detective was the former head of forensics at the NYPD, but is now a quadriplegic who can only exercise his mind. The killer is a man whose obsession with old New York helps him choose his next victim. Now, with the help of a beautiful young cop, this diabolical killer must be stopped before he can kill again!" (4 stars)

 b. The Coffin Dancer.











 "Detective Lincoln Rhyme, the foremost criminalist in the NYPD, is put on the trail of the Coffin Dancer, a cunning professional killer who has continually eluded the police. Rhymes —-a quadriplegic since a line-of-duty accident — must use his wits to track this brilliant killer who’s been hired to eliminate three witnesses in the last hours before their grand jury testimony. Rhyme works with his eyes and ears, New York City cop Amelia Sachs, to gather information from trace evidence at the crime scene to nail him, or at least to predict his next move and head him off.

So far, they have only one clue: the assassin has a tattoo on his arm of the Grim Reaper waltzing with a woman in front of a coffin." (3 stars)

c. The Empty Chair.











"It's not easy being NYPD detective Lincoln Rhyme, the world's foremost criminalist. First of all, he's a quadriplegic. Secondly, he's forever being second-guessed and mother-henned by his ex-model-turned-cop protégé, Amelia Sachs, and his personal aide, Thom. And thirdly, it seems that he can't motor his wheelchair around a corner without bumping into one crazed psycho-killer after another.

In The Empty Chair, Jeffery Deaver's third Rhyme outing--after 1997's The Bone Collector and 1998's The Coffin Dancer--Rhyme travels to North Carolina to undergo an experimental surgical procedure and is, a jot too coincidentally, met at the door by a local sheriff, the cousin of an NYPD colleague, bearing one murder, two kidnappings, and a timely plea for help. It seems that 16-year-old Garrett Hanlon, a bug-obsessed orphan known locally as the Insect Boy, has kidnapped and probably raped two women, and bludgeoned to death a would-be hero who tried to stop one of the abductions.

Rhyme sets up shop, Amelia leads the local constabulary (easily recognized by their out-of-joint noses) into the field, and, after some Holmesian brain work and a good deal of exciting cat-and-mousing, the duo leads the cops to their prey. And just as you're idly wondering why the case is coming to an end in the middle of the book, Amelia breaks the boy out of jail and goes on the lam. Equally convinced of the boy's guilt and the danger he poses to Amelia, Rhyme has no choice but to aid the police in apprehending the woman he loves--no easy task, as she's the one human being who truly knows the methods of Lincoln Rhyme." (3 stars)

The remaining books are below (I'll highlight those I've read with a rating and those I have on my bookshelf with an asterisk) -
- The Stone Monkey (2002) (4 stars)
- The Vanished Man (2003) (4 stars)
- The Twelfth Card (2005) (4 stars)
- The Cold Moon (2006) (4 stars)
- The Broken Window (2008) *
- The Burning Wire (2010) *
- The Kill Room (2013) *
- The Skin Collector (2014)
- The Steel Kiss (2016)
- The Burial Hour (2017)
- The Cutting Edge (2018)
 
There you go. Still half an hour to go on the debate. Whew... I must say I don't mind Marianne Williamson, she's quite dynamic. Quite a few shots aimed at Mr. Biden tonight. 

Enjoy the rest of your week and for those celebrating, Happy Canada Day Weekend!!