Wrap Up of My Kind of Mystery 2018

I read 15 books for the My Kind of Mystery challenge this year.  Below is a list of the books that I read:

City of Ink by Elsa Hart
The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
Origin by Dan Brown
Plum Tea Crazy by Laura Childs
Shot in the Dark by Cleo Coyle
Death on Delos by Gary Corby
The First Family by Daniel Palmer
The Demon Crown by Dan Silva
I've Got My Eyes on You by Mary Higgins Clark
Beyond the Ice Limit by Preston and Child
Queen Anne's Lace by Susan Wittig Albert
Radio Girls by Sarah-Jane Stratford
City of Masks by S. D. Sykes
Story of a Sociopath by Julia Navarro
The Vineyard Victims by Ellen Crosby

Favorite Book:  Story of a Sociopath by Julia Navarro.  She gets the sociopath down right!

Second Favorite Book:  Death in Delos by Gary Corby. Each successive book in his Ancient Greece series is better than the one before it.

Least Favorite Book:  I think there is a 3 way tie for this award. I did not like Origin, The Essex Serpent and Plum Tea Crazy. It is unusual for me to not like a mystery but it happened often this year.  Dan Brown's Origin was not his usual treasure hunt and it seemed like he didn't write it himself. Plum Tea Crazy is part of a long series by Laura Childs where the last several books were very similar. She is publishing 3 books a year for 3 different series and the writing is suffering.  The Essex Serpent was a slow moving story with a small plot.

City of Ink

City of Ink is the third book in the Li Du mystery series set in eighteenth century China.  In this installment of the series former imperial librarian Li Du is back in Beijing from exile.  He is working as the assistant to the chief inspector of the North Borough Office of Beijing's Outer City.

There are many new men in the city preparing to take exams for potential government positions when the wife of the owner of The Black Tile Factory and a man, who appears to be her lover, are found dead in the administrative office of the factory one morning. Li Du and his boss, Chief Inspector Sun, begin an investigation into their murders.

The murdered bodies were found on page 12 which meant that most of the book could be devoted to finding the killer.  I think that is important in a mystery.  I hate it when the crime doesn't occur until a third of the way into a book.

The author used setting descriptions to maintain the historical features of the novel but kept the dialogue mostly contemporary for a quicker read.  Some of the dialogue referred to a historical past but it was still contemporary. The reader certainly was able to get the feel of being in imperial China which showed the author's knowledge of the location and era.

City of Ink was much better than the second book in the series, The White Mirror. I think the reason is that City of Ink took place in Beijing and White Mirror took place while Li Du was on the road. In the first book in the series, Jade Dragon Mountain, Li Du was on his way out of Beijing into exile but there was alot of back story taking place there.  I think Beijing is the best setting for this series since the hero is, after all, a librarian. Li Du seems to be more in his element here.

City of Ink is a great whodunnit. I highly recommend it and give it 5 out of 5 stars!

The Essex Serpent

This is the first book by Sarah Perry that I have read. It is her second novel, a work of historical fiction set in London and Essex in 1893.

After Cora Seaborne's uncaring husband dies, she abandons her society life in London and takes a trip to Colchester and the coastal town of Essex with her 11 year old son and his nanny where she is free to pursue her personal interests in the natural sciences. She continues to see her former husband's physician who she initially feels affection for, affection that is returned. Here she first hears about the 300 year old legend of the Essex Serpent who has recently been seen roaming the local waterways. The serpent has been rumored by local residents to have killed a man. In Essex Cora meets the Reverend William Ransome and his wife Stella and becomes a friend of the family.

I read a positive review of this book last year but what made me pick this book up at the library is its gorgeous cover. We don't often see beautiful covers like this so I want to point out that it was designed by Peter Dyer using images from iStock and William Morris. Dyer is a graphic artist in London who has designed many book covers in his illustrious career.

I don't usually read straight historical fiction as I prefer historical mysteries. Historical fiction reads a little slow for me. However, I felt this book was even slower than normal for historical fiction. I was engaged in the plot during the first half of the book but completely lost interest at the halfway mark.  While I continued reading I was bored. There was very little plot movement or character development. I couldn't wait for the book to end and skipped some of the last 100 pages.

This book was disappointing. That old saying that you can't judge a book by its cover applies here.

Origin

Origin is the 5th installment of Dan Brown's Robert Langdon series.  However, unlike the earlier books this one had a boring start, mediocre middle and a strong finish.

I have a rule that if a book does not grab my attention by the first 50 pages I put it down.  It didn't grab my attention but I kept reading anyway because this is a Dan Brown book.  In the first 3 pages there was talk about a new scientific revelation that scientist Edmond Kirsch discovered that would upend all religions. For the next 100 pages there was only talk about what it could possibly be. There was no action nor any statement about what this new revelation was. Kirsch was planning on revealing his discovery at an event at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain that would be live streamed to millions.  However, Kirsch was murdered during his presentation but before he could state what his discovery was. As his former teacher, Robert Langdon was invited to the event and witnessed the murder.

The story then picked up as it alternated between Langdon's attempt to find out who killed Kirsch as well as figure out what his discovery was and the scene at the Spanish Royal Palace where Prince Julian, assumed to be a staunch supporter of the Roman Catholic faith, is about to ascend the throne.

This book did not read like a Dan Brown book. The sentence structures were different. The suspenseful chapter endings were not there. There was no treasure hunt or emphasis on symbols as in prior novels but rather just a murder mystery. It seems like Dan Brown did not write this novel. That is how different Origin is from his prior books.

I was disappointed with Origin. While the plot premise was good, the writing was not. Let's hope he gets it right the next time.

Plum Tea Crazy

Plum Tea Crazy is Laura Childs' 19th Tea Shop Mystery.  The series takes place in historic Charleston, South Carolina.  I have read all of the books in the series and have loved them.

The story opens with Indigo Tea Shop owner and amateur sleuth Theodosia Browning viewing a Gaslight and Galleons Parade from friend Timothy Neville's mansion.  A local banker, Carson Lanier, falls from a rooftop and impales himself on an iron fence. Some observers thought they heard a shot before he fell. However, it is later discovered that Lanier was shot with a bolt from a  medieval crossbow before he fell.  At the request of her friend Timothy Neville, Theodosia becomes involved in the investigation into Lanier's death.

I think this series needs a shot in the arm.  The same events happen in the same order in every book.  While I applaud the author for always having the crime committed in the first chapter so that the entire book is devoted to the whodunnit, after that the book is stale.  We series readers know that secondary character Delaine Dish will host a fashion show where 2 women will have an argument and Delaine will then have a tantrum that can only be soothed by Theodosia. We know there will be 2 extravagant tea events in her shop, although those tend to be rather interesting. We also know that the Heritage Society, chaired by Timothy Neville, will be the place where the crime or a crime will be committed. Usually it is where the crime to be solved in the book occurred. The murder place should be varied.

The main characters are great. Theodosia, her tea blender Drayton Connelley, her cook Haley and police detective Bert Tidwell are awesome. Some of the regular secondary characters are no longer interesting, especially Delaine, and the author should create some new ones. Theodosia has some eccentric relatives that maybe should become more prominent characters. Theo uses her secondary characters to help her solve murders so it is crucial that they not only be interesting but grow as characters.

I was disappointed with this installment of the series. I will give the series one more chance but if the author doesn't mix things up a bit I will stop reading it.

Shot in the Dark

Shot in the Dark is Cleo Coyle's 17th coffeehouse mystery.  It is classified as a cozy mystery series but it is a modern cozy mystery as there are hints about sex and a bit more information about the violent demise of the deceased. I presume this is due to the author being a husband and wife duo: Alice Alfonsi and Marc Cerasini.

Shot in the Dark opens with the sound of a gun going off at the Village Blend, where couples who met on an online dating site Cinder are meeting in person. A woman who was dumped by a man after a one night stand is holding a gun at him and taunting him to stop him from abusing other women. Clare Cosi, co-owner of the Blend with her ex Matt Allegro, calls the police and the woman is arrested before anyone gets hurt. Later that night while Clare is picking up her former mother-in-law from a bad date, she sees a body floating in a river. The body turns out to be a former Cinder employee who is working on starting a fitness app.  Phone videos of the event at the Blend go viral and business for both the Blend and Cinder slumps. Clare decides to lure back who she believes the murderer is by hosting an event with Cinder at the Blend but only after setting up her own fake Cinder profile to attract his attention.

Online dating apps form the background for the story.  If you are unfamiliar with them as I am you will learn how they function as well as how they affect people emotionally. I now know how to set up a fake name with a prepaid credit card and its always a good idea to register under both sexes to see what comments are being made about you. Always read the terms and conditions to be sure the app employees are not paid to read or write comments. I thought this was an interesting topic for the authors to address. I  haven't read any other authors who have used this topic and they may be the first to write about it.

A subplot with the latest designer street drug Styx is intertwined with the murder to include Mike Quinn. Quinn is now Clare's fiance and is a police detective with the NYPD.  He has been a character in the series from the beginning.

As usual with this series there is alot of coffeehouse and coffee bean lore that you will learn and there are recipes at the end of the story for some of the drinks and pastries mentioned in the book.

As I mentioned earlier, this is a modern cozy with a hint of sex and some violent descriptions of the deceased. I prefer this type of cozy.  It is more realistic for me.  The traditional cozies, which I used to love, are no longer satisfying for me. I am now only reading 3 of my usual cozy authors, Cleo Coyle, Laura Childs, and Susan Wittig Albert.

Shot in the Dark is a great addition to the series. The characters are funny as hell in this one, particularly the younger ones who staff the Village Blend and advise Clare about online dating. Also, Clare's ex-husband's unsuccessful attempts to get a date through Cinder are pretty funny since he has been known throughout the series to attract woman. Even her 80 something mother-in-law is using an online dating app but one only for those over 65. This seems out of character for both of them but the problems they run into are just plain funny.

I highly recommend this book. If you haven't read any of the earlier books in the series, you should not have any problems following the story. The authors do a good job a writing in the backstory with as little words as possible so that it doesn't detract from the current book.

Death on Delos

Death on Delos is the 7th Athenian Mystery by Gary Corby.  I was on a waiting list for 3 months to get it at my public library and finally picked it up this week.

The story opens with a heavily pregnant Diotima, priestess of Artemis, and her husband Nicolaos arriving on the Island of Delos so that Diotima can dedicate the annual offerings from Athens to Delos. There are 2 laws on Delos.  It is illegal to die there and it is illegal to be born there.  Violating these laws results in the entire island and everything on it needing to be resanctified for it is a holy place.

When the couple arrive they are accompanied by many warships.  The Persians are not far away and Athens believes the Delian Treasury is at risk.  Athens wants to temporarily remove the Treasury to Athens for safety.  However, the Delians feel betrayed by this plan and prefer to rely on their faith in their gods Artemis and Apollo to protect them. A Delian crowd gathers near the coast preventing the Athenians from moving forward without a fight. One Delian, Geros, gives a convincing speech to the crowd and gets them aroused against the Athenians and Pericles, their leader.  A day later, Geros is found dead of multiple stab wounds. It will now take weeks, maybe months, to sanctify the island for Diotima to be able to make her sacred offering.

Diotima and Nicolaos are known for their sleuthing skills and are asked by the Delians to determine who killed Geros.  I am always pleased when a murder mystery begins with the murder early in the plot.  Here, the murder took place on page 47 so we have the rest of the book to enjoy  figuring out whodunit.

Another plus is the common English language that the author has the characters speaking.  This is an ancient Greek mystery but aside from the character names, they are speaking English which makes the book a quick read. While the language is English, there is a ton of historical fact woven into the story which makes the book an authentic historical mystery.

Some of the historical facts are that the land on Delos has never been able to grow food.  That is why for centuries Delians relied on gifts to their deities from other Greek islands in order to survive.  Men used to urinate on vegetables in order to make them grow! This strategy did not work though. When a resident was about to die they were put in a boat and sent to another island. Pregnant woman were sent to Mykonos.

I have read all of Corby's Athenian Mysteries and loved them all.  I believe they are getting easier to read.  I remember stumbling over names and words in the first 2 books and don't know if I just got used to the series or if the author made some changes.  Of course, he could be a better writer with 7 books under his belt now.

I highly recommend this series to both mystery and historical fiction fans.

The First Family

The First Family was written by Daniel Palmer but he used his famous father's name on the front cover too.  Michael Palmer wrote 21 medical mysteries before his death 5 years ago.  The First Family is a medical mystery.

The front cover book summary:
"The White House is not an easy place to grow up, so when the president's son Cam Hilliard, a sixteen-year-old chess champion, experienced fatigue, moodiness, and an uncharacteristic violent outburst, doctors are quick to dismiss his troubles as teen angst.  But Secret Service agent Karen Ray, whose job it is to guard the president's family with her life, is convinced Cam's issues are serious-serious enough for her to summon her physician ex-husband for a second opinion.

Dr. Lee Blackwell's concerns are dismissed by the president's team-until Cam gets sicker.  Lee must make a diagnosis from a puzzling array of symptoms he's never seen before.  His only clue is a patient named Susie Banks, a young musical prodigy who seems to be suffering from the same baffling condition as Cam. Hospitalized after an attempt on her live by a determined killer, Susie faces increased jeopardy as Cam's condition takes on a terrifying new dinension.

Is someone trying to kill the president's son?

As Lee and Karen raced for a cure to Cam's mysterious and deadly disease, they begin to uncover betrayals that breach the highest levels of national security.

Returning to the same Washington, D.C., setting of The First Patient, which former president Bill Clinton said "captured the intense atmosphere of the White House," The First Family is a riveting new medical drama from acclaimed novelist Daniel Palmer, in the tradition of his late father, New York Times bestselling novelist Michael Palmer."

First, let me say that Daniel Palmer has all of the talent his father had. He published several suspense novels before this one and I would categorize The First Family as a medical thriller, not a medical mystery.  He used the thriller formula. Since the medical mystery is my favorite mystery sub-genre, I hope this author continues to write them.  There are not many authors who write them but there are many who write suspense, albeit not at the high level he was writing at.

I read this book in one sitting.  It was that gripping. The characters were sympathetic even though they were the first family and I am sick of reading about current events in today's political climate. That was quite an achievement in itself. The first family was portrayed as any family would be with a teenager. This author used the emotional bonds of the family but the setting of the White House did advance the plot significantly. 

One of the main plot thrusts not mentioned in the blurb is that the 2, really 4, kids affected with the condition all attended a private institution after school that helped them achieve prodigy status in their chosen interest.  The TPI dispensed non-FDA regulated supplements to its students to help them achieve greatness. The CEO of TPI is a strange man and he makes a great villain but he is not the only one, of course.

The First Family is an action packed thriller with medical and legal issues about pushing kids to high performance.  I highly recommend it!

The Demon Crown

The Demon Crown is James Rollins' 19th solo novel. While it is a Sigma Force novel, it is a bit unusual because the threat they are fighting against is a prehistoric wasp.

At the conclusion of book 8 in the series, Bloodline, the Sigma Force crew had eradicated Japan's Kage, also known as the Guild, a terrorist group.  However, at least 2 of them survived.  One of them, Seichan, is now working with the Americans and Takashi Ito, has formed a smaller, tougher group whose intent is to replicate a Pearl Harbor attack on Hawaii.  Takashi hopes it will bring an Imperial Japan back to power.

A secondary plot concerns James Smithson, the creator of the Smithsonian Museum.  Upon his death in 1829 in Italy, he was buried with a chest.  He left papers that mentioned a secret artifact that could leash hell upon the earth.  He called it the demon crown and ordered that it be buried with him.  When Smithson's grave was about to be uprooted by a quarry in 1903 Alexander Graham Bell, a Smithsonian Regent, immediately took a group to Italy and brought back Smithson's bones and the chest which contained a vial filled with amber and bones.

Over the early years of U. S. history the Librarian of Congress personally ensured the security of Smithson's personal papers and the chest but in 1944 a robbery took place and they were stolen by Japanese agents.  A few Sigma Force members later wondered whether this robbery was the reason for dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima for no one knew if the vial held a weapon.

On May 6 in the present day a swarm of wasps entered the city of Hana on the island of Maui and killed 54 people with their venom but injured a thousand more.  Commander Grayson Pierce and girlfriend Seichan are vacationing in Hawaii when the swarm arrives and instantly react to the event.  The Sigma Force deployment begins.

I was enthralled with the book until the halfway point when I realized how far-fetched the plot was.  It was still thrilling but it was bizarre.  Author James Rollins is a veterinarian by trade and his scientific and historical facts have always been accurate in the past  so I gave him the benefit of the doubt and continued reading.

He added a special touch with the addition of chapters written from the wasps' point of view.  We now know how they think and why they act a certain way.  As a woman I was amused that after the mating ritual the female wasp eats the male wasp.  I thought this addition was quite creative, especially coming from a male author.

The thriller formula was followed exactly.  It began with a killer hunting down a victim, high stakes were maintained for the main character, the action kept moving as complications were heaped on the Sigma Force crew, the clock was ticking toward a deadline that suddenly was shortened and ended with the world restored but the world is a different place.  I like when an author who writes a novel consistently every year does not get bored and change the formula. Many authors have fallen to boredom and written a few poor novels but Rollins has been consistent with the thriller formula.

This may be James Rollins' best book to date.  It certainly was his most creative.

I've Got My Eyes on You

I've Got My Eyes on You is Mary Higgins Clark's 45th novel.  She has also co-authored 9 additional novels with 2 other people. This is a career total of 54 novels, quite the accomplishment.

The story opens with high school senior Kerry Dowling throwing a pool party for her high school graduating friends one night when she is home alone.  Kerry is dating Alan Crowley but was flirting all night with another boy Chris Kobel whom she will be going to Boston College with. She asks her guests to leave at 11 pm so she can clean up before her parents return the next morning.

Her next door neighbor, Jamie Chapman, watches the party from his bedroom window and comes over after he sees a man approach her with a golf club and then sees her entering the swimming pool. Kerry always invited Jamie to swim with her and Jamie does not understand why he was not invited to the party.

When Kerry parents return the next morning with her sister Aline they find her body floating in the pool.  The police are called and begin questioning every teen in attendance at the party in order to determine who her killer is.

The Queen of Suspense wrote another suspenseful novel here.  Each chapter ending pushed you to read the next chapter and the next and so on.  The author's choice of words made this easy reading.  I finished the book in one sitting.

There was some romance involved in the story that I felt was out of place.  Kerry's sister Aline began seeing the police investigator and a fellow teacher her first week back in town.  I cannot imagine any woman being interested in going out to eat with men she does not know right after a family member is killed.  That seemed odd to me. I would expect that a grieving sister would go straight home to her family after a day of work.

Aline was the amateur sleuth of the story, not the police investigator. That surprised me also. I  was expecting this book to be a detective story but the police detective used Aline to locate new information from the students who were in attendance at Kerry's party.  Aline began a new job as a guidance counselor at Kerry's high school the week after she was murdered and used the job to obtain information for the police.  I also thought that was odd, not something a normal person would risk doing.

Even with these anomalies, I've Got My Eyes on You was a great read which was just what I would expect from an author like Mary Higgins Clark.  She did not disappoint.

5 out of 5 stars!

Beyond the Ice Limit

Beyond the Ice Limit is Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's 4th Gideon Crew novel and it is a sequel their 2000 book The Ice Limit. It is a stand alone novel so readers do not have to read the first book to understand the plot.

Five years before the events taking place in the book engineer Eli Glinn led a team to southern Chile to retrieve a meteorite.  A combination of a storm, an attack from a rogue ship captain and the strange behavior of the meteorite itself caused the ship to sink, killing most of the people on board.  A working hypothesis was made that the meteorite was a spore for an alien life form.

In the present year, Eli Glinn recruits Gideon Crew to build and detonate a nuclear weapon under the sea in order to kill the alien life form that he is worried might be growing where the meteorite was dropped into the sea. A crew is assembled and board a ship bound for Chile.  Undersea recovery efforts were able to obtain the sunken ship's black boxes and a video of the ship's last moments revealed that as the meteor hit the salty sea water it transformed into a different being.  Further tests showed that while the alien life form was under the sea it also extended 2 miles under the sea bed.  This gave it the potential to threaten the life of the entire planet earth if it wasn't destroyed.

Portions of the story seemed like science fiction with the alien controlling worms that infected the brains of most of the workers on the ship. With the advance of the worms there was a rush to detonate the bomb even though it was not large enough to reach beneath the seabed.

However, this was definitely a thriller.  I was hooked from the first page and could not stop reading until I had finished the book in one sitting.  Each chapter ended with enough suspense to keep me reading.  The scientific rhetoric was minimal so that a layperson such as myself could easily read through the book.

I now feel the need to read The Ice Limit even though I already know how it will end. I am curious about any details of the earlier story that I may have missed.

Highly recommended.

Queen Anne's Lace

Queen Anne's Lace is Susan Wittig Albert's 26th China Bayles Mystery and it is a good one.  Time has not lessened the author's ability to create great mysteries for this series year after year. Queen Anne's Lace is obviously the herb featured in the novel as it is the title of the book.  It was used by many women for family planning in times long past, specifically as an herbal contraceptive and abortifacient.  This usage is detailed in a secondary plot that occurred in the 1800s.

The story opens in Pecan Springs, Texas in 1885 with the death of Annie Duncan's husband Douglas in a train accident.  Annie was so distraught that she miscarried their first child, conceived with the help of an herbal tea, later that same day.  They lived at 340 Crockett Street next to another couple, Adam and Delia Hunt.  The two men had been best friends since childhood and Adam began helping Annie with some chores after her husband's death.

In the present day, China Bayles and business associate Ruby find a chest filled with old photos and handmade lace while cleaning out a storeroom in their Crockett Street shop Thyme and Seasons. After Ruby leaves, China is left alone but hears a woman humming.  When Ruby returns she offers an explanation that the air conditioning turned on and sounded like humming. They consult a friend who is an expert on old laces to determine if there is a story behind what they found in the chest. While running the shop China mysteriously finds that her signs are being changed by someone but no one admits to changing them.

The chapters alternate between the 1800s plot and the present day plot where China's adopted daughter has entered two chickens in the county fair. While the story is basically about the 1800s the only real crime in the book occurs at the end of the story at the fair.  This is most unusual for a cozy mystery series based on solving crimes.  However, the 1800s story is so compelling who cares whether there is a crime, unless you want to consider the moral crimes committed here?

I LOVED this book.  The new characters comprising the 1800s plot were interesting, complex and romantic. If you love digging into your genealogical history, you will enjoy China and her friends trying to figure out who the people are in the photographs as well as what the background is on the laces that they found.  As a bobbin lace maker, I appreciated the information on the different types of laces that China's expert gave.  How they fit into the story is for you to find out when you read Queen Anne's Lace. 

Radio Girls

Radio Girls is Sarah-Jane Stratford's first historical novel. It covers the period of time between 1926 and 1932 when the BBC radio station was just beginning.

American Maisie Musgrave lands herself a job in London as a secretary at the BBC.  She is intimidated by her bosses and smart co-workers.  She has difficulty adjusting to the hectic pace of the job but is captivated by this new technology called radio and is thrilled to have this job.  Her insecurities are apparent to her primary supervisor Hilda Matheson who manages the groundbreaking Talks broadcasts where famous people are interviewed for 15 minutes. Everyone expects that Maisie will end up working solely for Hilda as she is doing well assisting with the Talks.

Hilda Matheson was a real person who worked for MI5 during WW1 and received the OBE later in life.  This book seems to be about her contributions to the broadcasting industry and the book has merit for presenting this history.

However, I can't say whether Maisie did or did not end up working for Hilda Matheson because I stopped reading. I have a rule that if a book does not capture my attention within the first 50 pages, I put it down. I gave Radio Girls a 70 page chance but could not get interested in the book.

The writing style was directed toward a British audience.  The dialogue between the characters reflected the slang terminology of the era and some of the words I did not understand. In addition, I did not understand what was meant by a number of sentences.  The way I defined words in some of the sentences could not be what the author intended as the result was nonsensical.

I was disappointed with Radio Girls.  I had high expectations for it based on the back cover blurb as well as other reviews that I read about the book. 

City of Masks

City of Masks is S. D. Sykes' 3rd Somershill Manor Mystery novel.  This novel does not take place in England as the first two books in the series did but rather takes place in Venice in 1358.

The story opens with a Prologue where the main character, Oswald de Lacy, finds the dead body of the grandson of his Venetian host, John Bearpark, an English ex-pat in Venice.  In the next 40 pages not much happens as de Lacy and his mother socialize with their host John Bearpark and his other guests.  Here de Lacy is coerced into nights of drinking and gambling with grandson Enrico and his friends, spending time with boring religious pilgrims Bernard and Margery Jagger, secretly staring at Bearpark's non-speaking young wife Filomena and dealing with the staff at Casa Bearpark. It is after these 40 pages that the body of grandson, Enrico, is found and the story continues with de Lacy being asked to investigate Enrico's death.

The excitement in the book begins with de Lacy's investigation but the author interspersed a few chapters about de Lacy's past from the earlier books in the series. These chapters have no bearing on the plot and I don't know why they were added.  De Lacy gets his first clue from his host who tells him that Enrico sexually preferred men over women. This confused de Lacy as Enrico had tried to get him to go to brothels with him. However, he trusts his gut and begins the investigation with the home's security guard who was not on duty the night of the murder and has since disappeared.

The author displayed her knowledge of medieval Venice in this novel. She portrayed the history of Venice at a time when it was at war with Hungary and how it affected commerce as well as everyday life for Venetians. The political powerhouses of the day were also depicted in realistic terms with their ability to put to death homosexuals upon only hearing an accusation, deciding which families could use the best ships for transport of goods as well as people, and deciding what crimes were worthy of investigation.

I feel that the setting should have stayed in England. This installment of the series was not as exciting as the earlier two, Plague Land and The Butcher Bird.  De Lacy's sleuthing skills were hampered by being in a foreign country.  He not only was unfamiliar with the physical layout of Venice but he did not understand the culture of the city and its people.  Part of what made his sleuthing skills superior in his homeland was his understanding of how his own people's minds worked.  Also, it is difficult to view this as a Somershill Manor mystery when the events taking place are not at Somershill Manor.

I would rate this book 3 stars of of 5.

Story of a Sociopath

Julia Navarro wrote one gripping story in her 2016 psychological thriller Story of a Sociopath.  The book is a character study of sociopath Thomas Spencer, a fictional character. The author writes about events in Thomas' life that took him down a wrong path, beginning when he was a boy, and then in italics she writes a section about what he would have done if he had not been a sociopath.  All of this is written from Thomas' viewpoint, first person.  This is a chunky book with 864 pages.

In the prologue Thomas Spencer muses over his life as he mulls his impending death.  He admits "I am scum...I was born without a conscience, or at least I never knew where to find one, but perhaps one will knock on my door tonight."

Thomas was the black sheep of his family, a wealthy family in the upper echelons of New York society.  He disliked every member of his family and each of them responded by showering love on him because they could not understand why he was different.  He had all the advantages that wealth can give a person including education and the need to not even work if he chose not to.

However, as the oldest son in the family he was expected to follow in his father and grandfather's footsteps and become a lawyer in their law firm. He could not do that for 2 reasons.  One, he despised them and wanted to hurt them and two, he floundered in school.

Thomas ended up at an unheard of advertising school run by a former ad executive who fell from grace.  This educational credential was not expected to help any graduate in the job market but Thomas made it work by moving to London.  There he gave up life of privilege and over a lifetime forced his way to the top working in media for politicians.

It has been a long time since I have been truly interested in reading a novel.  This book gripped me from the first page and kept me reading.  The author, Julia Navarro, is a favorite of mine but I have struggled getting through the books of my old favorite authors.  Perhaps I am simply not interested in the political, spy and treasure hunt mystery subgenres that I have traditionally read and Ms. Navarro wrote a few great mysteries that I enjoyed.  Story of a Sociopath is a different type of novel for both her and me and I loved it.

Nasty characters are fun to read about and Thomas Spencer delivers here.  There are many dark plot twists as you would expect with a character study on a sociopath as well as with someone involved in political campaign management. Thomas accidentally stumbled into this career but he got lucky because it perfectly fit his personality.

This was a great read.

My Kind of Mystery 2018 Reading Challenge

I am rejoining this reading challenge which began at the beginning of this month and will end on January 31, 2019. There are no requirements concerning the number of books you need to read or concerning the sub-genres of the mystery genre.  I like not having rules in a challenge and I think I will read more mysteries without having them.

The Vineyard Victims

The Vineyard Victims is Ellen Crosby's 8th Wine Country Mystery and it is a wonderful addition to the series.  The story opens with the main character, Lucie Montgomery, swerving her car to avoid crashing into a car driven by former presidential nominee and billionaire Jamison (Jamie) Vaughn.  Vaughn crashes his car into the stone pillar that is the entrance to Lucie's vineyard.  Lucie does not hear him trying to stop his car and after he refuses her help to get out of his car she believes that he was suicidal. The car caught fire and Lucie heard his screams as the fire consumed his body.  Vaughn, however, told Lucie before he died that he wanted her to "tell Rick to forgive me."

Lucie soon discovers that there might be a connection to Vaughn's desire to die and a 30 year old murder that occurred when he was at college with his wife, campaign manager and a deceased friend.    A handyman, Taurique Youngblood, was convicted of the murder but a civil rights group, the St. Leonard Project, has taken on his case as they believe that he is innocent of this crime.

The author did a good job of weaving in characters and facts from earlier books in the series and anyone would be able to follow the plot without reading the earlier 7 books.  Facts about wine abound in the book which made the book fun to read.  The Vaughn's own a nearby vineyard and were planning to host a fundraiser to eliminate Vaughn's campaign debt by featuring a wine from the 1890s.  They had several bottles of the wine and only a select few people at the fundraiser, $20,000 per ticket, were going to have the pleasure of drinking the wine.  Lucie's winemaker, Quinn Santoro, believed that the Vaughn's tampered with this wine as it should have tasted like vinegar due to its age but that is a secondary story.  Most of the wine lore surrounded this wine, called the Norton wine, instead of Lucie's wines which is a little unusual.  However, it did not affect the enjoyability of this book.

Cozy lovers should take note of this series if they haven't already!