Since my update last Friday, I've completed another 3 books. I'll provide my reviews of those books. I haven't started any more books and might not until I finish the others I'm currently reading.. well, maybe another couple of graphic novels. 😃 I have one new book and I'll provide the synopsis of that. As well, I'll continue with my ongoing look at Women Authors whose work I've been enjoying.
Just Finished
"Preamble. I like going to a local bookstore, Books4Brains. I always seem to buy something and of late I've been trying their collections of graphic novels. Many are YA but they have a nice variety. Anyway, in talking with the owner after purchasing the 3rd Vol of Lore Olympus, she also thought I might like this series, starting with Heartstopper: Volume One by Alice Oseman. It's a series that started on something called Web Toons, then moved to graphic novels and is now a series on Netflix. (pretty successful for a series that began in 2019.
With that preamble out of the way, this is a series that isn't in my normal wheel house. It's a YA series about a young fella, Charlie, in high school, who has come out as gay and is now in a budding relationship with another fella, Nick, who is in a higher year than Charlie.
It's a well-crafted story and drawn excellently. It's about any young person falling in love, dealing with rejection, growing up. In this case the people in the relationship just happen to be boys. I don't usually read YA romances but when they are told so well, it's an enjoyable read. Will I continue with the series? Well, I don't see why not. try it yourself. (4.0 stars)"
"Siren of the Waters by American author Michael Genelin is the first book in his Commander Jana Matinova crime series, set in Slovakia. It's an excellent intro to the series and will keep me exploring it. The book moves from the present where Jana investigates the murder of a truckload of prostitutes traveling through Slovakia from Ukraine and leads her to Ukraine and then France. It also shifts to Jana's past, her relationship with husband Dano, a radical trying to overthrow the Communist government and its consequences on her marriage and career.
The investigation is a bit of a strange one. Matinova goes to Ukraine to meet with a bent copper, Mikhail, to find out about the dead folks and learns about Koba, an international criminal with a murderous bent. He likes using ice picks... Enough said. She is then invited to an EU conference in Strasbourg by Moira Simmons, who chairs the committee that is investigating international trafficking. While there, there are a number of other murders that both Matinova and a Russian delegate, Ivan Levitin, investigate. It's kind of confusing but at the same time, quite different and interesting.
As well, Matinova is trying to arrange a meeting with her estranged daughter Katya. This estrangement is explained throughout the story in a series of flashbacks. So we get to understand Matinova's life, her police career, etc. Also very interesting.
All in all, it's a nicely paced, interesting crime story, with interesting characters with whom you can empathize. Matinova is a tough, smart cop and I grew to like her very much. Her 'partner', Levitin and her boss, Trokan, is also excellent, loud, blustery and supporting Matinova through all of her trials and tribulations. Excellent intro to what I hope will continue to be an entertaining series. (3.5 stars)"
"A few years back I began exploring the crime series listed in the back of Soho Crime's mystery selections. The Kramer and Zondi investigation series set in South Africa by author James McClure was one of the series. The Steam Pig is the first book in this crime series. Well..... while there were things to like in this first book, like the main characters, a setting with which I was very unfamiliar, I have to say I just didn't get the mystery itself.
Basically, as I grasped it (or didn't), a young woman was found murdered, killed with a bicycle spoke through her heart. This is a typical Bantu assassin style murder. There is also confusion regarding the body at the coroner, even down to the girl's eye color. Lt. Kramer, a white police detective, is the first to begin the investigation and he soon brings in his partner, Bantu Sgt Zondi.
As I said at the beginning, I like the two main characters and also their working and friendly relationship, made more interesting as it is set during the Apartheid era of South Africa. I also quite liked Kramer's girlfriend, Widow Fourie, and how she is his sounding board as he thinks about the investigation and I do hope that relationship is further explored. I also liked Moosa, the Indian gentleman who Zondi starts to use as a CI in the township. Another character who I hope gets further development.
While I was aware of the Apartheid period of South Africa's history; the details provided in the story were an eye-opener and if I continue the series (I do have the next two books), I hope the author explores it more deeply. The lives of the victim and the possible suspects and witnesses are inextricably intertwined with South Africa's race distinctions and treatments and lives under Apartheid. What it means to be white, colored, Asian and how these distinctions impact the characters' lives make the story very interesting.
Unfortunately, I just found the mystery itself, somewhat labored and convoluted. I could blame fatigue for that, but the story did leave me wanting more. As I mentioned, I do have the next two books and I found the story interesting enough to explore further. But also somewhat disappointing. (2.5 stars)"
New Books
"For ten years, something has gnawed at Isaiah Quintabe's gut and kept him up nights, boiling with anger and thoughts of revenge. Ten years ago, when Isaiah was just a boy, his brother was killed by an unknown assailant. The search for the killer sent Isaiah plunging into despair and nearly destroyed his life. Even with a flourishing career, a new dog, and near-iconic status as a PI in his hometown, East Long Beach, he has to begin the hunt again-or lose his mind.
A case takes him and his volatile, dubious sidekick, Dodson, to Vegas, where Chinese gangsters and a terrifying seven-foot loan shark are stalking a DJ and her screwball boyfriend. If Isaiah doesn't find the two first, they'll be murdered. Awaiting the outcome is the love of IQ's life: fail, and he'll lose her. Isaiah's quest is fraught with treachery, menace, and startling twists, and it will lead him to the mastermind behind his brother's death, Isaiah's own sinister Moriarty."
Margaret MacMillan is a Canadian historian. She was born in Toronto in 1943 and attended my alma mater, University of Toronto, albeit a few years before I did. Along with the Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman, she wrote two books on WWI that I've enjoyed greatly. I really should check out her other works. Let's look at my reviews of both of the two books I've enjoyed.
Between January and July 1919, after "the war to end all wars," men and women from around the world converged on Paris to shape the peace. Center stage, for the first time in history, was an American president, Woodrow Wilson, who with his Fourteen Points seemed to promise to so many people the fulfillment of their dreams. Stern, intransigent, impatient when it came to security concerns and wildly idealistic in his dream of a League of Nations that would resolve all future conflict peacefully, Wilson is only one of the larger-than-life characters who fill the pages of this extraordinary book. David Lloyd George, the gregarious and wily British prime minister, brought Winston Churchill and John Maynard Keynes. Lawrence of Arabia joined the Arab delegation. Ho Chi Minh, a kitchen assistant at the Ritz, submitted a petition for an independent Vietnam.
For six months, Paris was effectively the center of the world as the peacemakers carved up bankrupt empires and created new countries. This book brings to life the personalities, ideals, and prejudices of the men who shaped the settlement. They pushed Russia to the sidelines, alienated China, and dismissed the Arabs. They struggled with the problems of Kosovo, of the Kurds, and of a homeland for the Jews.
The peacemakers, so it has been said, failed dismally; above all they failed to prevent another war. Margaret MacMillan argues that they have unfairly been made the scapegoats for the mistakes of those who came later. She refutes received ideas about the path from Versailles to World War II and debunks the widely accepted notion that reparations imposed on the Germans were in large part responsible for the Second World War.
A landmark work of narrative history, Paris 1919 is the first full-scale treatment of the Peace Conference in more than twenty-five years. It offers a scintillating view of those dramatic and fateful days when much of the modern world was sketched out, when countries were created--Iraq, Yugoslavia, Israel--whose troubles haunt us still."
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