Completed Books
(Two books completed since my last update)
"The Wycliffe series by British author W.J. Burley is one of my favorite crime series. Wycliffe and the Tangled Web is the 17th book I've enjoyed in the series and the remaining 5 books are sitting on my book shelf. I'll have to take time to savor them. I haven't been reading them necessarily in sequence but each story can be read as a standalone.
We meet Hilda Clemo, a late teen, whose family runs a camping site on the outskirts of a Cornish village. She tells her older sister, Alice, that she is pregnant and then heads off to meet her boyfriend, Ralph Martin, who works for his father running a tour boat business. They have an argument on the boat and she leaves when he docks at the first stop. She tells him she's going to take the bus home and heads off... and that's the last time we see Hilda.
Hilda's father calls the police when she doesn't make it home and it's reported up the chain and eventually, one of Wycliffe's detectives, Kersey makes his way to the village to start up a search. Eventually, when it's reported to Wycliff, he also gets involved and of course, the investigation begins in earnest.
As the title suggests, it's a tangle web of family mattes that the team find itself involved in. There are ill feelings between two branches of the family that live right next to each other. Hilda's grandmother had recently passed away and as the investigation progresses, Wycliffe discovers another death (murder?) of an elderly aunt, living with the Rules (the other branch of the family)
It seems that Hilda wasn't all that nice of a girl. She inculcates herself into various lives, trying to find weaknesses, for what reason? Well, maybe just so she knows. The story is peopled with very interesting characters, each with their own reasons for disliking Hilda. As the investigation in the disappearance (Is Hilda even dead??), we find out more about her dealings within the family and also with the next door neighbour, an art critic and his crippled wife.
The story moves along very nicely. Burley is very comfortable with his characters and the setting for the story. I vaguely remember watching the TV version of this particular book, each was excellent in its own right. I've enjoyed every book in this series, not a cozy mystery but usually not a thriller. Just an entertaining story with neat characters and well-written. (4.0 stars)"
"A preamble before I review Fire on the Mountain by Terry Bisson.
1. I decided to get this book as a result of exploring publisher PM Press and their Outspoken Authors series of books; which features interviews and short stories from selected authors. Bisson interviews many of the authors and PM also published this book, which sounded interesting
2. I have been enjoying the book since starting it, but last night, I had a really scary dream. One of those dreams that even after you wake up, you can't go back to sleep because it's still behind your eyes, poking at your brain. So even though it was 2 am, I decided to finish this book. It achieved the aim of removing the nightmare from my mind but instead I found myself still thinking about what I'd read and what I wanted to say about it. Needless to say, I ended up watching boring news so I could get back to sleep.
Preamble over. Fire on the Mountain , subtitle is 'What if John Brown had won at Harper's Ferry? The Classic SF novel of a black utopia in the American South'
So there is your premise. We're in an alternate history following 3 story lines. First you have Yasmin and her daughter Harriet, traveling in the new US, or alternate US. The South is now called Nova Africa and is a socialist, mainly black society. Yasmin has been working as an archeologist in Africa while Yasmin stayed with her grandmother. They've gone to bring back papers of their grandfather (great grandfather?) who had been involved in the wars after John Brown's attack on Harper Ferry. The museum is run by Grissom, a white man who lost a leg fighting to create this new America.
The 2nd storyline follows Dr. Abraham, the self same great grandfather, who tells the story of what happened at Harper's Ferry and afterwards from his perspective as a young 12 year old, living with his Mama and a white horse 'salesman?' in Harper's Ferry.
The 3rd story follows Dr. Thomas Hunter, a white doctor from the south who is trying to help John Brown by gathering medical supplies for the revolution. His story is told in epistolary fashion through his letters to his sister and to the woman he loves, another doctor who has gone to practice in England. The letters are provide to Grissom by the elderly sister, now 100+ years old.
There are two smaller subsets that add more richness to the story. Nova Africa is about to land on Mars. Yasmin and Harriet are trying to get back to grandma's house to watch it with her. It's a bittersweet moment for Yasmin as her husband, Leon (the Lion), was on the original fly-past of Mars and he lost his life, floating away in space, after saving the ship. She has not gotten over this and it is a constant theme through her dealings with Harriet.
The other substory is a book that Dr. Hunter's sister gives to Yasmin to read; John Brown's Body. It's a white supremacist science fiction story about what would have happened if John Brown hadn't succeeded in his attack. (Of course, in our life, he didn't succeed, so in effect, we are living now in this Sci-Fi alternate history).
Anyway, the story wanders between the characters, adding facts, relationships (how young Abraham eventually meets Dr. Hunter and their work together as doctors. Oh, there are the 'living boots' that Yasmin gives to Harriet as a gift. Manufactured on the moon, they grow and form to the foot. Yasmin can't remember what it is that makes them grow quicker, but that comes clear as the story winds down.
For a relatively short story, my copy was 154 pages, it's just such a rich, emotional, beautifully written story. The more I got into it, the more I loved the characters, their relationships with each other. It left me kind of sad that I'm living in this Sci-Fi story that is hinted at, the land where white supremacists are systematically trying to destroy the world to keep themselves in power. I want to live in the USSA (Unites Socialists States of America). It's not perfect. They had to fight for it. But it just seemed to have community, hope. Oh and I definitely want a pair of living boots! I really do!!! Please, read this story. It's fantastic (5.0 stars)"
Currently Reading (started since last update)
"Jerin was a mental freak—one of those eerily brilliant geniuses who could play a dozen games of chess at once and win every one of them. Blount was a millionaire fanatic with a fiendishly ingenious plan for beating Jerin at his favorite pastime. It was up to Nero Wolfe and Archie to prove that Blount’s plan hadn’t included murder… "
"For Joanna, her husband, Walter, and their children, the move to beautiful Stepford seems almost too good to be true. It is. For behind the town's idyllic facade lies a terrible secret--a secret so shattering that no one who encounters it will ever be the same.
At once a masterpiece of psychological suspense and a savage commentary on a media-driven society that values the pursuit of youth and beauty at all costs, The Stepford Wives is a novel so frightening in its final implications that the title itself has earned a place in the American lexicon."
Nimbly hopscotching backward and forward in time, Disch charts the shifting relationships between this world's inheritors: an aging matriarch who falls in love with her young social worker; a widow seeking comfort from the spirit of her dead husband; a privileged preteen choreographing the perfectly gratuitous murder. Poisonously funny, piercingly authentic, 334 is a masterpiece of social realism disguised as science fiction."
Balle is hypnotic and masterful in her remixing of the endless recursive day, creating curious little folds of time and foreshadowings: her flashbacks light up inside the text like old flash bulbs.
The first volume’s gravitational pull―a force inverse to its constriction―has the effect of a strong tranquilizer, but a drug under which your powers of observation only grow sharper and more acute. Give in to the book's logic (its minute movements, its thrilling shifts, its slant wit, its slowing of time) and its spell is utterly intoxicating."
Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There’s Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who knows she’s going to go home and marry her baby’s father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.
Everything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they’re allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by adults who claim they know what’s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely. There’s always a price to be paid…and it’s usually paid in blood."
On a planet where stories govern identity, where science and magic are a merely point of view, a fallen princess, a reluctant wizard, and a precocious child must unravel the past to shape the future.
Betrayal, ancient myths, and the clash of worlds converge in this spellbinding tale of courage, friendship, and self-discovery."
The victims are all middle-aged and the police are initially baffled, until a tenuous link suggests the victims were involved in a rape/murder trial fifteen years previously. Ross and his team of detectives soon realize that the killer has a 'murder list' and that unless he or she can be stopped, the city's streets will soon be awash with the blood of the innocents.
The Mersey Ferry Murders is a tale of rage, revenge and retribution, as Ross's team race against time to prevent the killer from carrying out a plan of heinous proportions."
Award-winning cartoonist Jeff Lemire pays tribute to his roots with Essex County, an award-winning trilogy of graphic novels set in an imaginary version of his hometown, the eccentric farming community of Essex County, Ontario, Canada. In Essex County, Lemire crafts an intimate study of one community through the years, and a tender meditation on family, memory, grief, secrets, and reconciliation. With the lush, expressive inking of a young artist at the height of his powers, Lemire draws us in and sets us free. This new edition collects the complete, critically-acclaimed trilogy (Tales from the Farm, Ghost Stories, and The Country Nurse) in one deluxe volume! Also included are over 40-pages of previously unpublished material, including two new stories."
