It's Thursday afternoon and the rain is falling again. Jo is busy volunteering at the Auxiliary Society for Comox Valley Healthcare. It's a great little thrift shop on the grounds of the old St Joseph's Hospital and all the people working there are volunteers and the money goes to help the local hospitals. Check it out. Like it. Follow it. End of shameless promotion. I'm proud of Jo. She enjoys it so very much.
It's been a couple of weeks since my last update. So let's make this a beginning November reading update. I've finished 3 books in November. I'll provide my reviews of them. I'll also provide synopses of any books I've started. I have decided to minimize starting new books until I catch up on those I have ongoing. But I did start one. I've also received a few books in November so I'll provide the synopses of them as well. (and maybe I'll even continue with my ongoing look at women authors whose work I've been enjoying.)
Books Completed
"I've been enjoying the Hard Case crime novels and graphics this past year. They are throwbacks, gritty and entertaining. The graphics have action, grit, sex and move along at a fast-paced rate. The Girl Who Handcuffed Houdini by Cynthia von Buhler follows that practice. It's somewhat unique as it has real people and supposedly is based on a real situation; detective Minky Woodcock's following Harry Houdini on his tour of the US.
Basically, Minky Woodcock works as a secretary in her father's detective business. She wants to find out how her mother died (there is some mystery there). While her father is away on business, she meets mystery writer Arthur Conan Doyle, who wants to hire her father to investigate Harry Houdini. Doyle is a spiritualist and visits seances and such. Houdini spends his spare time trying to debunk these spiritualists.
Minky agrees to follow Houdini, becomes a member of his staff in effect. Also she spends time with some spiritualists and sees they are frauds. So there you go. We see fake spiritualists, one who performs in the nude. We see what might be attempts on Houdini's life (there appears to be some question on whether his death was accidental or more sinister).
It's an interesting story, moves along at a fast pace and is very gritty. Minky is an interesting character and is a no nonsense investigator. Not my favorite of this series but still entertaining. There seems to be another graphic in this series so I'll probably check it out. 😎 (3.0 stars)"
"The Pericles Commission is the 1st book in the Athenian mysteries by Australian author Gary Corby. The story is set in 460ish BC in Athens Greece. Nikolaos is the protagonist, son of Sophronicscus, who is a sculpture and wants Nikolaos to take over the business. Nikolaos isn't interested in this work and events will put him on a different, more political, pathway. As a side note, Nikolaos's younger brother is one Socrates, who provides insightful inputs throughout this story.
Nikolaos out for a walk, is surprised when a body falls from the sky (from the Acropolis) at his feet, dead from an arrow. Pericles, a young Democratic politician, arrives on the scene and offers Nikolaos a job to find out who murdered the man. The man is Ephialtes, a political leader trying to bring Athens into a Democracy.
That's the gist. The story follows Nikolaos as he wanders around Athens trying to find clues to the murderer, wandering into troublesome situations, upsetting various politicians, and risking his life to solve the crime.
It's a fascinating setting. How crime is treated makes for an interesting premise. How women are treated, how slaves are treated and how they fit into Athenian society, all make for a rich, entertaining story. The murder is always in the background, but it is the setting and the relationships that make the story interesting. There is tension but at the same time, humor as well. Nikolaos is a sympathetic character but there are many others; Socrates his brother who provides great insight (even it if's unwanted by Nikolaos); Diotima, daughter of the murdered Ephialtes, by his mistress (who is a strong character, budding priestess of Artemis and with a frisson between her and Nikolaos); Euterpe, the mistress of Ephialtes, sexy and funny and a strong woman; and Pythax, leader of the Scythian Guard, who helps and hinders Nikolaos.
All in all, the story moves along nicely, is eminently readable and enjoyable and the ending is quite satisfying; from a crime solving and political perspective. #2, The Ionian Sanction is now on order. (4.0 stars)"
"The Nicholas Pym historical adventure series by John Sanders contained 5 books. Without Trumpet or Drum is the 3rd book in the series. Nicholas Pym is an 'agent' of the government of Oliver Cromwell and works for his spy chief Mr. Thurloe.
In this 3rd installment, we find Pym in Newgate Prison. His life there is reasonably comfortable as someone has been paying to ensure he is well-fed and he has regular visits from a lovely lady. She finally helps him escape as Mr. Thurloe needs his assistance once again. Cromwell has been dead and the government has been taken over by General Monck. He has made arrangements with Parliament to have Charles Stuart (Charles II) returned to the throne. There are, however, factions within the Roundheads that want kill Stuart and turn the government over to the Army. Thurloe wants Pym to help find these traitors and also to look into the doings of Sir Marchamont, who seems to be conducting strange experiments at his castle.
So there's your premise and it leads to sword fights, explosions, plots, and all sorts of action and intrigue. Pym is in the same vein as the Scarlet Pimpernel and maybe Sharpe of the Bernard Cornwell novels. He's handy with a sword and his repeating pistol, attacks rather than sitting back and waiting. It's an entertaining adventure, even if the story is kind of convoluted. The ending was especially confusing, but that might partly be because I was in bed finishing the book. Anyway, it was an ok story, nothing to write home about, I'm afraid. (2.5 stars)"
Currently Reading
"When a murder mystery game is announced in the personal column of the village newspaper, all the residents of Little Paddocks plan to attend, but the parlor game quickly goes terribly wrong, prompting a visit from the inimitable Miss Marple."
New Books
"The old world is buried. A new one has been forged atop the shifting dunes. Here in this land of howling wind and infernal sand, four siblings find themselves scattered and lost.
Palmer has never been the same since his father walked out twelve years ago. His elder sister, Vic, is trying to run away from the past; his younger brothers, Connor and Rob, are risking their lives to embrace it. His mother, left with nothing but anger, is just trying to forget.Palmer wants to prove his worth, not only to his family, but to himself. And in the barren, dune-covered landscape of his home, there is only one way to earn respect: sand-diving. Plunging deep below the desert floor in search of relics and scraps of the old world. He is about to embark on the most dangerous dive of his young life, aiming to become the first to discover the rumored city below.
Deep within the sand lies the key to bringing his family together – and tearing their world apart."
Nothing is quite as it seems in this collection of eleven dazzling stories. We meet a queen who makes a bargain she cannot keep; a secretary who watches over the life she has just left; a man who bets on a horse that may—or may not—have spoken to him.
A startling and funny feast for the imagination, these stories conjure a multiverse of subtly connected worlds while illuminating the webs of chance and connection among us all."
In Positively 4th Street , David Hajdu recounts the emergence of folk music from cult practice to popular and enduring art form as the story of a colorful not only Dylan but also his part-time lover Joan Baez -- the first voice of the new generation; her sister Mimi -- beautiful, haunted, and an artist in her own right; and Mimi's husband, Richard Fariña, a comic novelist ( Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me ) who invented the worldly-wise bohemian persona that Dylan adopted -- some say stole -- and made his own.
A national bestseller in hardcover, acclaimed as "one of the best books about music in America" (Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post ), Positively 4th Street is that rare book with a new story to tell about the 1960s -- about how the decade and all that it is now associated with were created in a fit of collective inspiration, with an energy and creativity that David Hajdu has captured on the page as if for the first time."
So confesses Chief-Inspector Ganimard, Lupin’s implacable enemy in The Blonde Lady, the second of Maurice Leblanc’s many books featuring Arsène Lupin.
Published in the UK under the title Arsène Lupin versus Holmlock Shears, in The Blonde Lady high-spirited aristocratic thief Arsène Lupin, outmaneuvers Chief-Inspector Ganimard and matches wits with the famous English detective Holmlock Shears and his indispensable sidekick Wilson (the obvious variation of the names of these characters were used to avoid copyright infringement).
This edition relies upon the lively, faithful English translation by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, whose sparkling translation of Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar introduced English language readers to Maurice Leblanc’s irresistible creation."
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