Sometimes, you really can judge a book by it's cover. This cover is familiar enough to evoke the Longmire brand but it's grey and a little tired and oSometimes, you really can judge a book by it's cover. This cover is familiar enough to evoke the Longmire brand but it's grey and a little tired and offers no new incident or symbol to excite a reader's curiosity. It says, 'Read Me - I'm a Longmire novel' and not much else.
If I wanted to get someone to understand why I read so many Longmire books, I'd point them to 'The Cold Dish' or 'Another Man's Moccasins' or 'The Western Star' but not 'Land Of Wolves'. It's not that the novel is bad, it's just that it's only of interest to someone who is already a Longmire fan.
'Land Of Wolves' is the first book after Walt's traumatic, violent, only-I-working-alone-can-save-my-daughter mission in Mexico in 'Depth Of Winter', I was disappointed by 'Depth Of Winter' as a resolution to a long-running story arc and angry with Longmire's lone-martyr act but even I could see that the violent events of the book would alter Longmire and redefine the series. I went into 'Land Of Wolves' wanting to see what those changes were.
One of the things that I liked about 'Land Of Wolves' was the quiet, almost gentle way, that Craig Johnson made those changes apparent. At first, nothing much seemed to be different. I thought 'Land Of Wolves' was going to be one of those leisurely let's-talk-philosophy spirit-quest Longmire books with a bit of Basque culture thrown in to spice things up. After 'Depth Of Winter', I welcomed the return to the familiar and found myself relaxing into the book as I listened to George Guidall's distinctive voice take me through Walt's thoughts.
The plot was spun around two investigations, one into the presence of a lone wolf in the mountains and the other into the death by hanging of a shepherd alone in the same mountains. This being a Longmire book, I knew that neither the wolf nor the shepherd's death would be what they first seemed to be. The unexpected presence of a large wolf was bound to trigger Longmire's mystical side and the shepherd's death was bound to lead to dark secrets being revealed. I was happy with that.
The storytelling was slow, almost sleepy, and lubricated by gentle humour. The pace reflected both Walt's state of mind and his newly-limited physical abilities. The new scar on his face wasn't the only souvenir he brought home from Mexico. What he did there makes him reassess himself. The head injuries he suffered mess with his memory. The wound in his side limits his mobility and has taken away his stamina. These things combine to produce points when Walt spaces out entirely, disassociating and hallucinating. As the story is told entirely from Walt's point of view, it's not surprising that the novel had a distant, slightly confused atmosphere to it.
The plot around both the lone wolf and the shepherd works well, even though Walt is labouring under severe disadvantages that he's too stubborn to acknowledge.
The real point of the book seems to be to show Walt questioning whether he can or should continue as Sheriff and what he might do, who he might become if he took off his badge.
I'll have to wait for the next book to find out....more
I'm working my way through Christie's novels at the rate of one a month in their order of publication. Most of them are fun and some of them are remarI'm working my way through Christie's novels at the rate of one a month in their order of publication. Most of them are fun and some of them are remarkable but 'Hickory Dickory Dock' is the second book in a row that I've set aside halfway through. I could put 'Destination Unknown', last month's disappointment, down to Christie trying to revive her thriller writing and not getting it right but 'Hickory Dickory Dock' is her thirty-fourth Poirot book so I'd expected her to have the hang of them by this time.
'Hickory Dickery Dock' had all the signs of a crank-the-handle offering from a franchise that the author has grown bored with. From the first page, the book plods. The plot is slight and what there is of it is hard to take seriously. The exposition is clumsy and repetitive. The foreigner stereotypes are annoying. There is no tension. Unlike earlier Christie books with a nursery rhyhme title, the plot has little or no connection to the rhyme.
Some of the early character sketches were interesting but they tended towards the stereotypical if not the straightforwardly racist, It was as if Christie had based her characters on newspaper reports of what hostel-dwelling young people from multiple nationalities were like in 1955, rather than basing them on people she'd met. Miss Lemon and her sister were interesting but not interesting enough to stop 'Hickory Dickory Dock' from being too tedious for me to read the second half.
I'm hoping that next month's book, 'Dead Man's Folly' (1956), another Poirot book but this time in the more familiar environs of middle-class village folk, will be better....more
I'd been waiting for 'Ashes Never Lie' to come out ever since I finished the first Sharpe & Walker book, 'Malibu Burning' in August 2023. I had the boI'd been waiting for 'Ashes Never Lie' to come out ever since I finished the first Sharpe & Walker book, 'Malibu Burning' in August 2023. I had the book on pre-order for its release on 17th September 2024 so when I got the opportunity to read an ARC in advance of the release date, I dived in.
I had great fun with 'Ashes Never Lie'. I'm a Lee Goldberg fan but even so, this book exceeded my expectations. It was fast-paced, action-packed and completely engaging. Perhaps best of all, it has an Eve Ronin crossover that results in Walker and Ronin teaming up in a spectacular takedown that results in another viral Eve Ronin video, this time with her dressed as Wonder Woman.
I love the humour and the larger-than-life characters in Lee Goldberg's books but what I admire most are the clever, surprising but reality-based plots that drive the action. There's a lot going in 'Ashes Never Lie'. More happens in the first half (140 pages) of the book than most writers manage in a 500-page novel and yet it didn't feel rushed or confusing.
Sharpe and Walker investigate two very different arson-related crimes in 'Ashes Never Lie'. One has an epic, "unleash the apocalypse "scope worthy of a Michael Chrichton novel, The other has a domestic focus but has a lot more fireballs and explosions along the way to finding the guilty party. Both cases have scary, off-beat but believable bad guys and both bring Sharpe and Walker and Ronin and Pavone together to solve them.
Both plots benefit from Lee Goldberg's usual attention to the technical details. Both rapidly escalate from well-grounded (and in once case quite gruesome) starting points to something dangerous, explosive and unexpected.
Teaming up Walker and Ronin in these scenarios is like throwing gasoline on the fire. You know you need to stand well back and enjoy the show. Even then, I wasn't prepared for the tense, cinematic finale which kept me on the edge of my seat, grinning with amusement while still caught up in the action.
Will somebody PLEASE, PLEASE. PLEASE make this into a TV series? It would be so good (although I bet the books would still be better).
Anyway, If you're a Lee Goldberg fan, you're in for a treat with 'Ashes Never Lie'. This is Lee Goldberg at his best....more
A Load Of Old Bones' is a peculiar, surprising, irreverant, dryly amusing book that I found myself admiring, in a stunned is-it-really-going-to-go theA Load Of Old Bones' is a peculiar, surprising, irreverant, dryly amusing book that I found myself admiring, in a stunned is-it-really-going-to-go there? way. It made me shake my head and occaisonally smile. It didn't make me laugh mostly because, in the way of English comedies, at its heart this is a sad story of broken people doing bad things.
When I decided to read a book told from three points of view, the cat, the dog and the vicar, it never occurred to me that the most unexpected point of view would be the vicar's. I'd imagined a sort Father Brown with pets. A story with all creatures great and small working together as an amateur sleuth team. Whatever 'A Load Of Old Bones' is, it's not that.
The setting, a quaint English village in the 1950s, the cat, Maurice, supercilious, cynical and striving to remain emotionally detached and the dog, Bouncer, energetic, optimistic, friendly but brighter and more observant than he at first seems, qualify the novel as a cozy mystery. The two can talk to each other but not to the vicar. Of course they can't. Why would anyone think they could? Each has a voice perfectly suited to its nature and their overlapping but different views of people and events are fun to listen to.
It's the vicar, Francis Oughterard, who transforms the novel from a cozy mystery into something stranger and darker. He's not a man with a vocation. After being demobbed from the Army, an event he greated with relief, he entered the Church because it seemed to be the easiest path open to him. He has learned to fein the currently fashinonable muscular Christianity when absolutely necessary but finds the efffort draining. He's a naturally solitary man who aspires to nothing more than a quiet life.
At least, that was who I thought he was at the beginning of the book. The more I learned of him, the more I wondered if he was actually a troubled, quietly desperate man whose passivity comes from depression rather than serenity. I found Francis Oughterard to be a very believable character. His role in the novel was what surprised me.
What finally convinced me that I was reading something dark rather than something amusing was the murder scene. It wasn't a particularly violent scene. The killing was quick. It was the identity of the murderer that threw me.
The cat, of course, didn't care and the dog, when he figured it out, accepted it as perfectly natural.
I, on the other hand, am still going: THAT'S THE KILLER? NO!
I'd characterise 'A Load Of Old Bones' as a mischievous book. The characters, human and otherwise, feel real. The period setting is evoked with care. The storytelling structure is innovative and delivered with aplomb. I know that there are six Francis Oughterard books and that they have a strong fan base. I have no idea how the series wll move forward from here but I've bought the second book, 'Bones In The Belfry' to find out....more
'D Is For Death' is an entertaining start to a new series of historical mysteries set in London in the 1930s. It features the wonderfully named Dora W'D Is For Death' is an entertaining start to a new series of historical mysteries set in London in the 1930s. It features the wonderfully named Dora Wildwood, who is running away from her childhood home in Somerset to her godmother's house in London to avoid the fiancé she no longer wants to marry.
For the first few chapters, I thought 'D Is For Death' was a gentle fantasy designed to warm any bibliophile's heart and keep them safe from encounters with unpleasant realities. It seemed that, In Dora Wildwood's London, libraries are sanctuaries, nothing bad could ever happen in a bookshop and the gods of chance are on the side of the innocent, ensuring that Dora bumps into kind strangers who also love books and who are eager to help her when they see that she is out of her depth.
As I got to know Dora and as Dora saw some very bad things happen in a library, I realised that I had to reconsider Dora and the intent of the book.
I'd initially seen Dora as an innocent abroad, the kind that attracts trouble but doesn't understand why, the kind of person that Graham Greene described as "a leper without a bell" because their innocence puts at risk everyone they come into contact with. After meeting Dora's monstrous (but entirely believable) fiancé I understood both why she was running away and the resilience she's demonstrated by surviving his behaviour and her father's neglect.
I'd initially labelled 'D Is For Death' as a cosy mystery to be consumed with no more thought than I'd spend on the cakes served for afternoon tea. I was wrong (and perhaps mislead by an author with a wicked sense of humour). As the story unfolded, I started to see that there was a layer beneath the cosy optimism of the story that acknowledged the unpleasant realities of poverty, misogyny and male violence that hadn't been visible at first.
As Dora tried to solve the mystery of the murdered Head Librarian of the London Library. it became clear that she sees and remembers everything including all the sordid things in life and the misery it causes. Once I understood this, I realised that her optimism was not a default setting gifted by her innocence but rather a conscious choice about her she would deal with world.
The mystery at the heart of the novel is delightfully bookish, fits perfectly with the period and has enough twists to keep most Agatha Christie fans happy.
The only point where I felt the novel was weak was the handling of the big reveal. It was a dramatic reveal designed to entrap the guilty while allowing the alert reader to check whether they'd missed anything. Sadly, it went on for too long and went into too much detail for me. If Dora had had access to a PowerPoint presentation, I'm sure she'd have used one. I certainly felt like I'd sat through one.
Although I'd have liked the big reveal to have been delivered with more brio, I was still delightfully entertained by 'D Is For Death' and by Dora Wildwood. I want to see what she does next. I'll be back for the second book in the series....more
Going into 'Shutter', I thought I knew what to expect from a story about a forensic photographer who can see and hear the spirits of the dead. My expeGoing into 'Shutter', I thought I knew what to expect from a story about a forensic photographer who can see and hear the spirits of the dead. My expectations were set by characters like Harper Connely in Charlaine Harris' 'Grave Sight' or Charley Davidson in Darynda Jones' 'First Grave On The Right' or by TV characters like Alison DuBois in 'Medium' or Melinda Gordon in 'Ghost Whisperer"
I had my expectations completely reset by the time I'd listened to the chilling, no punches pulled, opening scene which is an extended account of a smashed body, spread across a highway at night, illuminated one piece at a time by the flash of Rita's crime scene camera. Rita was there for hours, taking hundreds of close up photographs of things no one should have to see. I knew then that this was going gritty rather than pretty and realistic rather than romantic.
I quickly learned that Rita's job, which she's been doing for more than five years, is more challenging for her than other people both because she's Navajo, and so aised to see dead things as a source of contamination and because she's been able to see and hear the spirits of the dead since she was too young to understand what they were. For me, the central questions of the novel became why Rita does this work, whether or not she can do the work and stay sane and whether the spirits would let her stop if she decided to.
'Shutter' isn't a conventional thriller. It's not even a conventional thriller with supernatural elements. The plot sees Rita caught between the demands and a violent vengeful ghost and the danger of confronting a drugs cartel and corrupt police officers. The level of tension builds throughout the novel as Rita's options narrow and the threat to her life becomes inescapable. What makes 'Shutter' different is that it's not plot driven. The plot is more like the flow of a river pushing at a boat. Rita is the story. The plot is a mostly a device for getting the reader to know and care about her.
The thing that pulled me into the novel was how Rita's life story was told through framed moments of intense feeling with a forward momentum provided by a ghost demanding answers. The relationship between Rita, her mother and her grandmother emerged from layers of memory, assembled the way Hockney would create portraits from multiple images. The moments come from Rita's present day crisis and from her memories of growing up on the Reservation with her grandmother. The first half of the book is dominated more by chidlhood memories than by Rita's present day crisis. Some pople mught find the pacing frustrating. I liked it. The memories didn't disrupt the story, they gave it meaning. The present day crisis mattered because, by the time I was in the thick of it, Rita mattered.
I loved seeing the young Rita with her grandmother. She shines brightly in them. The text feels like a series of treasured memories that Rita visits to evoke the safety of home.
I liked the contrast between the sections when Rita is living with her grandmother which, even when the content is dark, speak of freedom and home and the sections when Rita is a forensic photographer sometimes plagued by the demands of ghosts which are soaked in exhaustion and distress and a voluntary confinement that is wearing her away like sand blowing against stone.
Rita doesn't see herself as a hero. She's not an amateur sleuth using her ability to see the dead to battle crime in Alberqerque. She's working to get enough money to return home to the reservation for good. She's doing forensic photograohy because it was the only way to make a living with her camera. She's trying hard not to interact with the dead. She's also starting to crumble under the stress and suffer from the isolation so, when she finds herself being threatened by a dead woman and stubbling into the path of violent criminals, it's enough to up end her life.
By constucting a portrait of Rita that has depth enough to capture her spirit, not just who she is now, but everyone she's been, Ramona Emerson made it easy to accept the reality of the spirits that Rita has been seeing since childhood. Their reality carries the same weight as the rest of Rita's history. I liked that the spirits for the most part, are not malicious but they are demanding in a way that could overwhelm Rita and detach her from her life. I also liked the way Rita's direct experience with the spirits is set in the context of her grandmother's belief in the spirits of the dead as a source of contamination.
I lovd the storytelling in 'Shutter'. The people felt real to me. The ideas were but still easy to relate to. The plot was strong enough to keep things moving and deliver a tense finish.
I'll be meeting Rita again in October when 'Exposure', the second novel in this series, is published.
I listened to the audiobook version of 'Shutter' because I wanted to hear how the names and places were pronounced. Charley Flyte's narration takes a little getting used to but it matches the text well. I'm hoping she'll also be the narrator for 'Exposure'....more
'Broken Bayou' is Jennifer Moorhead's debut novel but you'd never guess that from the text. The book opens with an impressively smooth introduction to'Broken Bayou' is Jennifer Moorhead's debut novel but you'd never guess that from the text. The book opens with an impressively smooth introduction to person, place and situation, all redolent with guilty secrets and locked-away memories that are eager to surface.
The story is mostly told using an interior monologue that is well-judged and engaging. I immediately got the sense of Dr Willa Walters as a woman who has created a persona that she had hoped would become a life but who is now in crisis. She's back in the small town of Broken Bayou, Louisiana, where she spent her childhood summers visiting her aunts. She's back because she needs to be, not because she wants to be. She knows her visit risks unlocking memories she's avoided for more than a decade but she needs to reclaim something from the house of her recently deceased aunts and she's in flight from a public debacle that could end her high-profile Fort Worth career as a podcast guru on child psychology.
In addition to engaging my interest in Willa's crisis, Jennifer Moorhead hooked my curiosity by providing hints that something bad was about to be uncovered in the town, Something that would make Willa's situation worse.
I liked the strong sense of place. The descriptions of the town and its people were vivid and cliché-free. They also set the context for plot and provided a tangible bridge to connect that present and the past.
There is a solid serial killer plot at the heart of this novel that is enhanced by approaching it not from the point of view of the killer or the cops hunting the killer but by approaching it sideways by having Willa reluctant stumble into the action.
The exposition of this story was perfectly paced to hook my curiosity, engage me with the main characters as people and slowly but inexorably crank up the tension. By the second half of the book, I was fascinated by watching Willa's past overwhelm her future so that her present became entirely about trying not to drown.
The final section of the book delivers a very tense and satisfying denouement that caught me completely by surprise but which made a great deal of sense.
I had fun with 'Broken Bayou'. I'll be watching for Jennifer Moorhead's next novel....more
'A Pocket Full Of Rye' was filled with energy, humour and sharp observation from the first page. This seemed like a book where Agatha Christie was enj'A Pocket Full Of Rye' was filled with energy, humour and sharp observation from the first page. This seemed like a book where Agatha Christie was enjoying herself. The plot was clever I didn't see the ending coming but when it did arrive, it left me smacking my forehead at having never even considered the right answer. I particularly like the letter at the end, which, if it had arrived on time, might have prevented so much harm.
I liked that the clever plot didn't dominate the book. I didn't feel as if I was involved in a 257-page puzzle-solving exercise. My attention was focused on the people in the household of the bizarrely dysfunctional Forescuefamily and on the police Inspector investigating the crime rather than on solving the crime itself.
Inspector Neele was a wonderful creation. He was a clever, competent policeman who took pleasure in being underestimated by the people he was interrogating. I enjoyed his wild speculations on what might have happened and his cool assessments of what probably had happened. Also, what's not to like about a police Inspector who quotes 'Alice In Wonderland'?
Then there was the redoubtable Miss Dove, who leapt off the page and into my imagination. A marvellous woman, inscrutable and so refreshingly and frankly malicious. She was clearly playing a part and relishing her own performance. I enjoyed her amusement both at those who sensed there was something off about her but couldn't define what it was and at those who were completely unaware that they were her sheep and she was their mischievous collie dog.
Miss Ramsbottom (The names in this book are priceless. I take them as another sign of how much fun Agatha Christie was having) was another character who was not at all what she seemed to be at first. I was fascinated by her combination of religious rigidity and insightful worldliness.
Finally, there was Jane Marple, who doesn't appear until nearly halfway through the book and who never took centre stage but who, nevertheless, shaped the lives of everyone around her.
I'm a Jane Marple fan. I love how she relentlessly and mercilessly pursues the wicked while staying in the shadows by doing her, 'Ignore me, I'm just a harmless old lady' Jedi Mind Trick. I think this is summed up by how she introduces herself to Inspector Neeles
"I wonder—I suppose it would be great presumption on my part—if only I could assist you in my very humble and, I’m afraid, very feminine way. This is a wicked murderer, Inspector Neele, and the wicked should not go unpunished."
This sentence, where she demonstrates that she knows how dismal but necessary her worldview is, made me smile:
‘Oh yes,’ said Miss Marple fervently. ‘I always believe the worst. What is so sad is that one is usually justified in doing so.’...more
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