Book of the Month: May

I absolutely loved this archeological thriller.  Here we have Cleopatra's burial place and treasures sought by two opposing groups. One is from academia and the other is from a crime syndicate called the Daughters of Cleopatra. Both groups are present at a Languages and Antiquity Conference in Rome. Sebastian Rossi has given a lecture on the various languages of Ptolemac Egypt. While always a popular lecture, the recent finding of Cleopatra's treasures one week prior to the conference made his lecture a must to hear. Sebastian's friend Adrian West is also in attendance at the conference and soon after Sebastian's lecture has ended, she receives a call from her former FBI partner Nick Harper. Nick tells her that Sebastian has been abducted. The hunt is on to not only locate him but to find out why he was abducted. The novel was highly entertaining.

The Thorn

The Thorn is the first book in The Rose Trilogy by Beverly Lewis. The trilogy is about two sisters who are on the fringes of the Amish church. Rose Kaufman and her married sister Hannah, called Hen, are struggling with their relationship with their church. Hen left the church when she married an Englisher, but wants to come back. Rose, on the other hand, is considering leaving. It was published in 2010.

The publisher's summary:  

Lancaster County, with its rolling meadows and secret byways, may seem idyllic, but it is not without its thorns. Rose Kauffman, a spirited young woman, has a close friendship with the bishop's foster son. Nick dresses Plain and works hard but stirs up plenty of trouble too. Rose's sister cautions her against becoming too involved, but Rose is being courted by a good Amish fellow, so dismisses the warnings. Meanwhile Rose keeps house for an English widower but is startled when he forbids her to ever go upstairs. What is the man hiding?

Rose's older sister, Hen, knows more than she should about falling for the wrong man. Unable to abandon her Amish ways, Hen is soon separated from her very modern husband. Mattie, their young daughter, must visit her father regularly, but Hen demands that she wear Amish attire and speak Pennsylvania Dutch, despite her husband's wishes. Will Hen be able to reestablish her place among the People she abandoned? And will she be able to convince Rose to steer clear of rogue neighbor Nick? 

The Thorn was an enjoyable novel but it did not engage me as as much as other novels by Beverly Lewis. The plot was simple and the writing did not give much mystery. At times I felt bored. That said, the characters were interesting. Both Rose and Hen were strong women that did not fit the Amish mold. Rose tried her best to fit into that mold because she knew it was expected of her. Hen, on the other hand, tried to fit into the English lifestyle that she chose for herself a few years back. While they were on different paths, Rose and Hen still retained their strong bond as sisters, unusual in the Amish community. In the other Amish fiction books that I have read there is always a broken relationship between family members who stayed in the Amish community and those who left. It was odd that these sisters resumed their relationship when Hen returned without any questions asked.

Thorn was an OK read. 3 out of 5 stars.

Mother's Day Murder

Mother's Day Murder is the 10th Lucy Stone cozy mystery by Leslie Meier. She has currently published 34 books in the series. In the past when I have reviewed the Meier books that I liked, I said that it was a fluke for me because the first few books of her's that I read did not appeal to me.  I must reevaluate those statements. I have thoroughly enjoyed the past 3 books that I have read and it isn't a fluke.  I guess I just did not like those first few books.

In this installment of the series, Lucy Stone knows that the victim of a shooting murder, Tina Now, was feuding with Bar Hume over the popularity of their respective 16-year-old daughters Heather and Ashley. Tinker's Cove is still reeling from the disappearance 10 months earlier of a teen youth counselor, and Bar's arrest is almost as shocking. In digging for answers regarding the alleged killer mom, Lucy uncovers some awful revelations about Bart Hume, Bar's philandering cardiac surgeon husband. However, his mistress is killed in a suspicious car accident. Lucy and her teenage daughter Sara become caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse.

The story delves into a few social issues, such as controlling parents, gun control and bullying. The author is not preaching here but allows the use of current affairs in her writing. It worked well for this book. The first clue to the identity of the perpetrator of the crime was introduced at the midway point. My guess concerning whodunnit turned out to be correct. However, I still enjoyed the read. 

4 out of 5 stars. 

The Cleopatra Cipher

The Cleopatra Cipher is book number 1 in the Adrian West Thriller series by L. D. Goffigan.  It is an archeological thriller/treasure hunt mystery set in Rome and Egypt. The next book in the series, The Excalibur Deception, will be published in July 2022.

I LOVED this book!  From the first pages I was captivated by this story. Cleopatra's burial place and her treasures are sought by two opposing groups. One is from academia and the other is from a crime syndicate called the Daughters of Cleopatra. Both groups are present at a Languages and Antiquity Conference in Rome. Sebastian Rossi has given a lecture on the various languages of Ptolemac Egypt. While always a popular lecture, the recent finding of Cleopatra's treasures one week prior to the conference made his lecture a must to hear. Sebastian's friend Adrian West is also in attendance at the conference and soon after Sebastian's lecture has ended, she receives a call from her former FBI partner Nick Harper. Nick tells her that Sebastian has been abducted. The hunt is on to not only locate him but to find out why he was abducted.

The writing was tight and suspenseful and the characters were fully developed. The protagonist of the series is Adrian West. She is a great character but I believe that without Sebastian as a counterpart, I am not sure how well she can carry the series. I definitely liked Sebastian better. I was not able to tell if he will be an ongoing character in the series. Nonetheless, we will find out in 2 months when the second book in the series is published.

I preferred the Rome setting. Fortunately the setting didn't move to Egypt until the midway point in the story. We read more about the Italian landscape and food than the same in Egypt. The Egyptian part of the plot centered on action more than setting description. 

This is a hugely entertaining novel!  5 out of 5 stars.

Policing the City

Policing the City is an ethnographic written by Didier Fassin. Originally published in French in 2020, it has now been translated into English. The novel is dedicated "to all those who undergo daily the harassment, the humiliations, the baiting, and sometimes the violence and racism of the police, and who are finally succeeding in making their voices heard." 

The publisher's summary:

Adapted from the landmark essay Enforcing Order, this striking graphic novel offers an accessible inside look at policing and how it leads to discrimination and violence. What we know about the forces of law and order often comes from tragic episodes that make the headlines, or from sensationalized versions for film and television. These gripping accounts obscure two crucial aspects of police work: the tedium of everyday patrols under constant pressure to meet quotas, and the banality of racial discrimination and ordinary violence. Around the time of the 2005 French riots, anthropologist and sociologist Didier Fassin spent fifteen months observing up close the daily life of an anticrime squad in one of the largest precincts in the Paris region. His unprecedented study, which sparked intense discussion about policing in the largely working-class, immigrant suburbs, remains acutely relevant in light of all-too-common incidents of police brutality against minorities. This new, powerfully illustrated adaptation clearly presents the insights of Fassin’s investigation, and draws connections to the challenges we face today in the United States as in France.

While described as a graphic novel, it is not a novel but rather a graphic memoir. Everything in the book actually happened. I dispute some of the author's conclusions, such as that French police officers copied bullying tactics from American law enforcement.  I also do not believe that the anti-crime efforts of the French police are as black and white as they author shows us. Fassin says that almost all of the police rely on their political beliefs when dealing with so-called crime. He also says that the victims of police brutality are 100% innocent. Nothing is really this black and white and I think that Fassin has done a disservice to the problem of police brutality. I believe that he has a prejudice against the police because, as he stated early in the book, his own son had a run-in with the law.

3 out of 5 stars.

Bootblack

Bootblack is a historical graphic novel of 1930s New York City. It takes place during the construction of the Rockefeller Center.  Originally published in French in 2020, it has now been translated in English. The story is about Altenberg Ferguson who hates his German name and family. Leaving home still a child, he lives on the streets working as a shoe shiner also referred to as a blackboot. After changing his name to Al Chrysler, he soon tires of being hungry and sleeping outside in the cold. Al returns home only to see the building his parents were living in on fire. They perished. Returning to the streets he teams up with 2 friends to shine shoes. New friend Frankie talks the trio into running money for the mob but after deciding to steal some of the mob's cash, Al is caught by the police and sentenced to 10 years in an adult prison. By the time he is released WWII is ongoing. Al joins the army and is sent overseas to Germany, where he finds himself in the town of Altenberg, the town he was named after.

I enjoyed Bootblack. There was alot of mystery concerning where life would take Al. The story alternates between Al's childhood and his soldiering during WWII. I initially had a hard time figuring out where the story was going but after realizing that the story was alternating time periods, it was easy to accept and continue reading. In fact, I believe it enhanced the story. I certainly did not expect the ending but it was most appropriate given Al's identity issues.

4 out of 5 stars.

Django

Django is a graphic biography of renowned twentieth century guitarist Django Reinhardt. Born in 1910 in a Roma community in Belgium, Django's childhood friends were taking him in a bad direction. He began stealing and gambling. After a run-in with the police, Django's mother finally buys him what he always wanted-a banjo. Django learns how to play quickly and he develops an expertise by his teen years. He plays in several bands in Paris, earning alot of money. However, after a fire started in his caravan, Django's left hand is seriously burned. He is told that he will never play again but Django overcomes all the odds by switching to playing an easier instrument-the guitar. His fame continued to spread and he is considered one of the best musicians of his time.

The comic had a slow start for me. I had never heard of Django before reading the book. This child prodigy was leading a fantastic life. There wasn't much excitement until the halfway point in the story when he was injured in the fire. Then there was the wondering whether he would recover.  He had to use his hand differently after it was injured but the author did not go into any detail about how he made the transition.  Django had two loves, Naguine and Bella. These storylines were OK but there wasn't much mystery here.

This was an OK book. 3 out of 5 stars.

Book of the Month: April

It seemed impossible to select just one book as my favorite read for last month. I read 7 books and all of them were fantastic. 4 of these books were part of a series and the authors did their best writing to date.  

Leslie Meier's The Easter Bonnet Murder is the 35th installment of her Lucy Stone mystery series. In the past I found her books to be merely OK, mainly because I am not a huge fan of a traditional cozy. I read her latest book for a reading challenge as I couldn't find other books that fit the challenge requirements. I am so glad that I did. The Easter Bonnet Murder was a complex whodunnit and her best book to date. Alison Stuart's Evil in Emerald is the third book in her Harriet Gordon mystery series and I think it might be better even than the first, Singapore Sapphire. Ellen Crosby's Bitter Roots is her 11th wine country series entrant and, again, her best writing to date. Olympia is a sequel to graphic novel The Grand Odalisque. As with the others, it was fabulous. Peter Swanson's Nine Lives and Peng Sheperd's The Cartographers were written by new to me authors and these books were highly entertaining for me.

One author, Melissa Fu, wrote her debut novel about a Chinese family saga. Not many of the book blogs that I read like Asian fiction as much as I do. The fact that Peach Blossom Spring is a favorite of all the bloggers I read is a testament to the superb writing that Fu has executed. For this reason, Peach Blossom Spring is my best book for April 2022.

Life Update

I kind of fell off the wagon with my reading last month. Life has been difficult to say the least. A friend and co-worker went missing in early March. She was found 2 weeks later when her body washed up on the Lake Michigan shoreline. A cause of death has never been disclosed by the police. Her funeral is at the end of this week, 2 months after the supposed date of her death. The police seem to be keeping the details of their investigation close to the vest and not knowing is hard to bear. With the disclosure of information being piecemeal, there is never a sense of closure. Is there a so-called person of interest? I think so but I don't know much else nor how "interesting" this person might look to the police. Perhaps he isn't all that interesting. Perhaps there are other persons of interest.

My office returned to working in person the first week of April and at least 30 people have approached me to whisper their belief of who was responsible for her death. It's always the same person. If he didn't do this, it's his own fault for looking suspicious. Is it possible that she killed herself? Yes. She certainly had alot of drama to deal with. However, the facts given out by the police don't add up and every co-worker that approached me said so. All these whispers are adding to my stress level.

As I am writing this post, I realize it looks like a prologue for a mysyery novel that I might review. It's not. The death of Elise Malary has been reported in the news locally, nationally and internationally. What's funny is that it was reported in Britain before it was reported in the American national media. The whole affair has been devastating and I cannot concentrate on reading anymore. I don't know when I will get back to it. There were plans in the next 3 months for reviewing certain newly published books but, as the saying goes, I have fallen off the wagon.

I feel that I probably shouldn't publish this post. Writing it has released some of the tension that I feel and as I write, I am thinking about deleting the post either before or after publication. I do not know what to do. Part of me wants to shout from the rooftops and another part of me says to keep quiet. I question myself why I feel I should be quiet. There are no answers, just grief.