The Pot Thief Who Studied Calvin

The Pot Thief Who Studied Calvin was published last month. It is author J. Michael Orenduff's 10th Pot Thief murder mystery. The series features an antique seller who specializes in ancient works of clay and porcelain. Each installment of the series is titled "The Pot Thief Who Studied.  . ." It’s an interesting premise for a series. 

The publisher's summary: 

An Albuquerque ceramics dealer soon turns amateur sleuth after he gets a 3D-printed pot to die for.

Hubie Schuze usually digs through the dirt—often illegally—to find the ancient ceramics he sells in his shop, Spirits in Clay. But thanks to his nephew, Tristan, a computer science student at the University of New Mexico, Hubie receives a unique 3D-printed pot. And after a photo of it runs in the local paper, it becomes a popular item.

Unfortunately, the pot is sought-after by all the wrong people, and strange characters start darkening the doorway of Hubie’s shop. They’re willing to do anything to get their hands on the pot, and after Det. Whit Fletcher summons Hubie to the morgue, he discovers that includes murder. Now, to get to the bottom of things, Hubie must uncover what's so hot about this pot, before the cold-as-ice-killer strikes again. 

I wasn't expecting this story to be a cozy mystery but that's exactly what it is. Our amateur sleuth sells ceramic pots in between telling one joke after another. He is an expert on Calvin, Ross Calvin that is, but had to learn the finer points on John Calvin's predestination theory for his soon to be father-in-law. Ross Calvin wrote Sky Determines: an Interpretation of the Southwest, one of Hubie’s favorite books. This Calvin was a real-life Episcopalian priest whose 1934 book is a classic of New Mexico literature. He also was an adherent on predestination.

The story opened with a prologue at the local Albuquerque morgue where Hubie was present to identify the body. The story then shifts backwards in time to explain how the body ended up there. The first third of the book did not include a murder and I was getting anxious for it to happen so that I could read about the investigation. However, it came more than halfway through the story. The "investigation" consisted of the big reveal where Hubie explained every part of the case to a group of all the possible suspects. 

I had never heard of 3D-printers before. The author gives a good presentation of how they work early in the story. 

"It can operate in several ways. The one I used sets the printer to run its stylus over the surface of an object you want to copy. The movements of the stylus are stored in the printer’s memory. Then you have it follow the pattern of the object it now has in its memory, but this time it’s laying down soft clay as it goes, so it makes an exact duplicate of the object it traced.”

The book ends with a discussion between Hubie and his new bride whether the deceased's death was predestined. This story began and ended with the merits of predestination, which I had originally assumed given the title of the book. Pretty interesting. 

5 out of 5 stars.

The Art Collector

I received a free copy of this lovely mystery from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review. I can honestly say that it is spectacular. The book was published last year on August 28, 2024 and it is the second book in author Susan Bacon's mystery series.

The publisher's summary:  

A Warhol protégé, a Manhattan murder and a long-hidden truth. 

It is February 1987. Seal Larsen is a photographer, denizen of New York’s downtown scene and the subject of one of Andy Warhol’s short films. When she dies in a suspicious fall from the 15th floor of her Manhattan apartment building, her friend and neighbor, Emma Quinn, is determined to find out what happened. A history professor at Columbia University with connections to the intelligence community, Emma soon realizes how little she really knows about her friend.

Exploring Seal’s life, her work, her past, Emma makes her way down to Memphis and to rural Tennessee, putting herself at risk. It’s there, on an isolated 2,000-acre farm, that she begins to grasp the tragedy that defined Seal’s life and the truth about her death.

A sequel to The History Teacher, Susan Bacon's award-winning political mystery, The Art Collector is an intrigue, a puzzle, a plot-twister. It is also an exploration of the value of art and the people who make it and of the culture that fueled Manhattan's art boom in the second half of the twentieth century.

This story hooked me from the start. It perfectly blends art and history along with a spectacular mystery. I love art so the phenomenal amount of art history within the pages of the book also kept me interested. However, a reader who isn't interested in art probably won't like it. That said, it was fascinating that Seal’s connection to Andy Warhol, one of my favorite artists, was a main feature of the story. 

I loved the setting too. The 1980s New York City art scene was mesmerizing. I didn't know much about this era before reading the book and learned alot about how artists and their dealers did business. Another setting included in the book is the Deep South during the 1960s. Seal and her mother came from small town Tennessee. They left Tennessee with an African American cook named Merna and opened a restaurant in Harlem. The final leg of Emma's investigation leads her to a remote Tennessee farm where the final pieces of the puzzle fall into place.

The only complaint I have is that the middle part of the story moved rather slowly. All of the details about various artworks and the artists that created them was probably the reason. 4 out of 5 stars.

The Amish Quiltmaker's Unruly In-Law

When I just want a quiet day of easy reading I reach for an Amish fiction novel. This month I chose two books from the Amish Quiltmaker series by Jennifer Beckstand. In a few days I will review The Amish Quiltmaker's Unconventional  Niece.

In The Amish Quiltmaker's Unruly In-Law quilter Esther Kiem has recently moved to a new Amish settlement in Byler, Colorado. It is a new start for her as well as her husband Levi and baby Winnie. Esther's reckless brother-in-law Ben Kiem is the subject of the story. Mischievous and rebellious, young Ben has been making the wrong kind of name for himself throughout the town of Byler. He and his two buddies, Wally and Simeon, have stolen and destroyed the property of several neighbors. When the story opens Ben attached himself to the back of a buggy owned by the Eicher family and used water skis to ski most of the way on a snowy day. Of course, he gets hurt but he also ruins the back of the buggy.  Mrs. Eicher demands that Ben pay for the repairs but daughter Linda, the same age as Ben, laughed at him for his stupidity. He resents Linda for ridiculing him.

Once Ben and Linda meet, the story takes off. Esther puts her special matchmaking skills to the test. She somehow coaxes Ben into keeping company with the sensible Linda Eicher. Ben can’t see anything that they have in common or that he could ever be good enough for someone like her. Linda has a down-to-earth nature that makes Ben want to live a better Amish life. The suspense in the story is created from the ups and downs in their relationship and there are many.

 

I love the simplicity of Amish fiction but this story read like a mystery novel. There were so many problems that needed to be resolved in Ben and Linda’s relationship. They were complete opposites. Linda followed all the rules of the church while Ben didn't follow any if them even though his father was the bishop. Ben believed if he behaved badly enough times that there would be no expectations of him. There weren't. All of the members of the Byler church steered clear of him. This is Amish fiction so you know there has to be happy ending, and there is.

This was a lovely story to read and I am rating it 4 out of 5 stars.