A Plain Vanilla Murder

A Plain Vanilla Murder is Susan Wittig Albert's 27th China Bayles Mystery. Each novel features a different herb and this installment of the series features an orchid plant that grows vanilla pods. If you like to bake then you know that the price of vanilla extract and vanilla beans has skyrocketed. The author has chosen a timely subject to write about in this novel.

The summary from the inside cover blurb:

"China and Ruby Wilcox are presenting their annual Not Just Plain Vanilla Workshop, always a huge hit with customers at Thyme & Seasons Herb Shop. But someone involved with the workshop is driven by a deadly motive, and China soon finds herself teaming up with the very pregnant Pecan Springs police chief Sheila Dawson to solve a vanilla-flavored murder. But the lethal roots of this mystery reach back into the dark tropical jungles of Mexico, where the vanilla vine was first cultivated. At stake: a lucrative plant patent, an orchid that is extinct in the wild, and the life of an innocent girl."

This cozy mystery at times felt like a political mystery. The reader learns how vanilla plants are smuggled into the U.S. and sold at horticulture shows throughout the country. The murder victim had been developing a disease resistant vanilla plant. His secrecy over this activity resulted in him making many enemies at his college. Some of the prime suspects in his murder included jealous colleagues, orchid smugglers, and a disgruntled grad student that the victim was working with.

There were a few anomalies in the book. Police Chief Sheila Dawson has been pregnant in more than one installment of the series. In this book she is 8 months pregnant. How long can she be pregnant? Or should the question be what is the time lapse between murders in Pecan Springs that are written about in separate novels? In order to be able to investigate the next crime in the series Dawson has to have given birth and be back on the job. Also, two new secondary characters were introduced who had nothing to do with the plot. Ruby's daughter Amy Wilcox and her partner Kate Rodriguez were introduced and they are having a baby together with the assistance of a brother-in-law and a test tube. That was all that was said about them.

I thought that the investigation into the murder itself was intricately plotted. The pace was fast. There were as many red herrings and twists and turns as you might find in a standard political mystery but the writing was still done in Ms. Albert's folksy manner.

The author always has recipes at the back of her books. However, in this book the recipes at the back are more basic such as how to make your own vanilla extract, vanilla sugar, vanilla salt, vanilla paste, vanilla powder, vanilla syrup, vanilla butter, vanilla whipped cream, and vanilla vinegar. I am a baker so I had to write down these recipes for my own use. Recipes for dishes that the characters made in the novel are interspersed throughout the novel.

A Plain Vanilla Murder was truly a salute to vanilla. 5 out of 5 stars!

A Body in Barcelona

A Body in Barcelona is the 5th Max Camara Novel but the first one that I have read. It is a police detective novel set in Valencia, Spain but is categorized as a political thriller by the publisher.

The murder of a prominent businessman's young son did not occur until 70 pages into the book.  Setting descriptions abounded before the crime occurred. This overwhelmed me because they were about the police divisions in Spain and the Spanish language was used to describe the names of all of the divisions. Throughout the book I kept forgetting who was who. Place names, street names, district names were also all in Spanish. Spanish words were thrown in the book here and there. I don't speak Spanish so it was difficult for me to follow the plot. I tried to find a map to determine where each locale was at but couldn't find the right map. Location seemed important when cities are culturally divided in half, i.e., one part Spanish and one part Morrocan.

There was much writing about the current state of political affairs in Spain and in the EU. Since I am totally unfamiliar with their politics I kept wondering what part of it was true, if any. I didn't know what to believe. In essence, my lack of knowledge about Spain and various EU political departments made it hard to follow the story. The author presumes the reader can follow along. The mystery part of the book did begin moving around page 125 but the above problems handicapped my ability to understand the book. Each time the story started moving for me the author threw in a Spanish word and I could not understand the sentence. It was frustrating.

The author grew up in the UK and lived in Spain for several years so I believe that this book was written for Europeans. Also, I have to wonder if it would have been an easier read if I had begun reading the series with the first book.  I became so frustrated with the book I skipped about 100 pages to get to the end just to find out why the boy was killed. I still don't know due to the Spanish words that were occasionally used.

I don't quite know how to rate the book. It might be a great book for someone who speaks Spanish and is familiar with Spain. For me, it was a 0. Yes, 0 out of 5 stars. My first 0 rated book. 

Printer's Row Lit Fest 2019

I attended the Printer's Row Lit Fest today despite misgivings about recent  changes in its organization which I detailed in a post 2 days ago.  However, I did see a theme in the fest this year. All of the authors exhibiting their books were from Chicago or nearby suburbs. I would say that they were mainly nationally unknown authors. There were many writer's groups with booths where authors could present their books in two and a half hour shifts. Some of these groups I did not know existed nor did I know that there were so many writer's groups in the Chicagoland area.

Sisters in Crime Chicagoland was one group that I did not know we had here. As you readers are probably aware, this is a group of female mystery writers.  Also, there are two local groups under the

Romance Writers of America. The Chicago Writers Association, She Writes Press, Windy City Historians, Independent Writers of Chicago,

Naperville Writers Group, Illinois Women's Press Association, Chicago Black Authors Network, Bizarro Writers (comics), Society of Midland Authors, University of Chicago Press, University of Illinois Press, Northwestern University Press, Chicago Review Press, the Poetry Foundation of Chicago, and Lawyers for the Creative Arts all had booths with authors selling books. Even the Lawyers for the Creative Arts had books with legal information for writers. A few major booksellers from Chicago reclaimed their booths again such as Haymarket Books.

This book fair was an impressive display of local talent. There is some pride in that. However, there is also sadness that this book fair has lost its national stature. It had been the third top book fair in the U. S. Now it is a local book fair. 

I was there for four hours and had fun talking with the authors. What did I buy?  Check out these books which you can get on Amazon.

Musings on D-Day 75th Anniversary

After spending the early morning hours watching the ceremonies in Europe commemorating the D-Day Invasion, my mind swept back to memories of my father who served in the Eighth Air Force, known as The Mighty 8th.

He was stationed in England for at least a year and worked under General James Doolittle. He was not a pilot and I don't know exactly what he did.  He never went in to detail. However, online resources say that after General Doolittle took over, the Eighth Air Force bombed Germany from February through May just before the Invasion. They destroyed German air fields, railroads, aircraft factories, oil refineries, production and supply factories.  They also attacked the German front line on D Day.

Below are a few books to read about D-Day. I am putting them on my TBR list.

The Printer's Row Lit Fest is Coming this Weekend

The 2019 Printer's Row Lit Fest will be held this weekend. It has been one of the premier book shows in the U. S. for decades. Since the Chicago Tribune newspaper bought the show 5+ years ago, it has dwindled in size and the map of the show that I saw online this morning  is 1/8 its normal size. The Tribune has made many changes concerning what is allowed in the book fair and booksellers and publishers have been bowing out of the show in response to those changes. It is a shame.

This book fair was something Chicago could be proud of. Now it is so pathetic I may not even attend. For the first time the Mystery Writers of America will not be there so I see no reason to go. Most of the booksellers who have come in the past 20 years that I have been attending are not listed as exhibitors this year. I am shocked.

I noted in a blog post last year that the Tribune did not allow writers who personally published books to sell them. They also did not allow publishers of books of non-traditional political views to be sold. Likewise, the groups selling or giving away the Koran were absent. I found all these changes shocking.  The Printer's Row Book Fair, as it was originally called, was a free speech event. None of the attendees cared what an exhibitor was selling.  Everyone was polite to each other.

Half of the exhibitors shown on the lit fest website are advertisers that have nothing to do with books. I feel very disheartened. While there are some interesting author events, you cannot buy a ticket for them without being a newspaper subscriber. Most of these events are held far away from the lit fest.

The Tribune has ruined this book fair and since the newspaper may go out of business there might be hope of restoring this book fair to its glorious origins.

Broken Bone China

Broken Bone China is the 20th Indigo Tea Shop Mystery by Laura Childs. The series takes place in Charleston, North Carolina with three main characters. Theodosia Browning is the amateur sleuth of the series. She owns the Indigo Tea Shop. Drayton Conneley is Theo's tea master and together they go on fact finding sleuthing trips. Haley is the third main character. She is the cook and pastry chef for the Indigo Tea Shop. She mainly provides emotional support for the other two because she is busy running the tea shop while Theo and Drayton are running around town.  However, every once in a while Haley has helpful information that will solve the crime.

This story begins with the crime. Theo and Drayton are riding in a hot air balloon with the Top Flight Balloon Club when they spot a drone hovering over each balloon before it rams itself into one balloon, falling to the ground onto Theo's table and crushing her pink bone china cups. The Indigo Tea Shop had been hired to serve tea and pastries to the guests of the Balloon Club. However, after all four people inside the balloon were killed, the police were called and the party was over.

The next day a fellow Charleston business owner, antiques dealer Tod Slawson, arrives at the Indigo Tea Shop to talk about the balloon disaster. He called it a murder as victim Don Kingsley was selling a remnant of the American Revolutionary War, the "don't tread on me" flag. Two of the bidders for the flag were in the balloon with him and also killed. Slawson was bidding on the flag himself but the flag is now missing from Kingsley's home. The following day another Charleston business owner arrived. Angie Congdon asked Theodosia for her help in clearing her fiance's name in this crime. Harold Affolter worked for Kingsley's company and had been a whistleblower at the company. Harold also owned a drone.

Theo begins her investigation by visiting Kingsley's widow, who is happy as can be, and then Kingsley's assistant at the office, who cannot explain why he spent so much time at Kingsley's second home after the murder. However, this was just the beginning of an intricately plotted mystery. Every event and person mentioned was present for a purpose. This is vastly different from the past few books in the series where I think the author got sloppy in her writing due to the need to publish three books a year for three different series that she is currently writing. I am delighted that this series is back on track as I have loved it from the first book.

Even the special occasion tea events at the tea shop advanced the plot. This book had a Nancy Drew Tea and a Beaux Art Tea wherein the reader learned about the Nancy Drew books and beaux art (fine art) as well as the actual teas that were paired with the foods that were served at the events. I always enjoy reading about the tea. Drayton, as tea master for the shop, created teas for these events. This part of the book is fiction as there is no such thing as a tea master but Drayton's job seems believable in the world of cozies.

The setting of historic downtown Charleston is prominent in each book in the series and I feel that it should be considered a character too.  It's history, architecture and wealthy eccentric residents provide an interesting backdrop to these stories. Recipes for sweets made by Haley are given at the end of the book as are some suggestions by the author on how to host several special occasion tea events yourself.

Laura Childs made a great comeback with Broken Bone China. 5 out of 5 stars!!!

The Bengal Identity

The Bengal Identity is the 2nd book in the Cat Groomer Series by Eileen Watkins. It is the first book that I have read in the series though. The main character is Cassie McGlone who owns a cat grooming shop in Chadwick, New Jersey called Cassie's Comfy Cats.  Cassie has a degree in psychology and has had training in animal behavior and grooming. This cat mystery series is different from all others. While a different cat breed will be profiled in each book, the cats do not have special powers that help solve crimes. Cassie is the amateur sleuth of the series, not the cats.

The story opens with a new customer named Rudy Pierson coming in to Cassie's Comfy Cats asking to board his cat for a few days because his house just burned to the ground. Cassie was suspicious about his story because she had not heard about a fire on the news, his behavior was frantic and he said his cat only ate natural food and liked walking outside on a full face leash.  After agreeing to board the cat Cassie and her assistant Sarah noticed the cat Ayesha had matted hair and tried combing it out. That was not working so they gave her a bath, which did not bother her in the least. Brown dye came off of her fur in the bath and Cassie noticed Ayesha had fur that was marked with rosettes. Cassie discussed the unusual fur pattern with her boyfriend Dr. Mark Coccia, Chadwick's local veterinarian. He suspected the cat was a rare Bengal pedigreed cat. They both wondered if Pierson stole the cat since the cat's fur had been dyed to hide its identity and they suspected that he would try to sell it for thousands of dollars.

A few days later Cassie saw an article on the local news showing the dead body of an unidentified person who had died in a car accident. The face belonged to Rudy Pierson. Cassie went to the local police station to report her contact with Pierson.

There were many more twists, turns and red herrings in this adorable, well plotted cozy mystery.  The pace was quick which made the story a fast read. I was captivated by the plot and read the book in one sitting.  It has been some time since I have read a perfectly written mystery, true to the mystery formula. The Bengal Identity was a delightful surprise.

The Cassie and Mark characters have perfect professional backgrounds to work together to solve clues about cat breeds. The author chose their professions well and made this cozy series more believable by the choices she made.  I also think the author came up with a great idea for a cat mystery series. Usually the cat is the sleuth in a cat mystery series which requires a suspension of belief too far for me to travel. By having the cats as the potential victims she has created a way to celebrate the cats but not get too ridiculous. I also enjoyed reading about the Bengal breed. I assume that facts about whatever breed is featured in a story will be a regular feature in each book in the series.

I loved this book and happened to find it at the library by accident. While I was waiting for a librarian to locate a book that I had on hold, this book was staring at me on the closest shelf of books.  I got lucky here.

5 out of 5 stars!

Book of the Month: May

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My best book for the month of May is Jennifer Robson's The Gown.  The Gown is the story of how Queen Elizabeth II's wedding dress was designed and sewn.  While it had a slow start this book was mesmerizing once it got started.  The excitement that was in the air in Britain when Elizabeth's engagement to Phillip was announced was evident to the reader.  Coming out of the awful era of WWII the news of this wedding excited people, probably because it was good news.  Any good news may have done the trick but this was Elizabeth and Phillips's news.  The story primarily follows two embroiderers who worked on the gown.  There was a parallel plot from the current era that was interesting but not as compelling.  It was used, though, to help tell the story of the embroiderers.  Until I read this book I was not aware that Elizabeth's dress was packed full of embroidery.  I had seen pictures of her dress in the past and had seen rows of something in the dress but never would have guessed that it was silk embroidery.  I would love to see it now in the museum that it is housed in.  I understand, however, that the embroidery did not stand up to time as the silk material it was sewn to was not the best for having embroidery added to it.  However, the Queen's mother insisted on a particular type of silk for the dress.

Jane

Jane is a modern day version of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre told in a graphic novel format. The writer has changed Bronte's storyline but the two main characters Jane and her love Rochester are present.

The book summary from the back cover blurb reads:  "Growing up in an unhappy family in a small New England town, Jane dreamed of escaping to New York City to study art and live a life of independent adventure. Soon after arriving, she takes a job as a nanny for a mysterious, powerful businessman, Rochester, and his lovable but lonely daughter Adele, in a lavish apartment filled with unsettling secrets. Jane soon finds herself drawn into a world of intrigue, danger and romance that takes her far beyond her childhood dreams."

This is a delightful, fast paced read. However, if you're looking for Jane Eyre in a comic you will be disappointed. The author has changed the plot significantly. I think it is a cute book but the advertisement of the book as a modern day Jane Eyre is deceptive. The only thing it has in common with the old classic is Jane's family background and that she loves a man named Rochester.

The artwork is beautiful. Ramon Perez did the illustrations and Irma Kniivila did the coloring with her watercolor washes. The pages are primarily blue with gold highlights but many are orange with gold highlights or olive green with the gold. The effects are striking. I think the art makes this book. While it has interesting characters and a good plot, without these drawings I don't think the book would be as engaging.

I enjoyed this book immensely.  It's light charm was a perfect choice for the park on the first warm, sunny day of the season that I chose to read it on.

5 out of 5 stars.

Where We Live

Where We Live is an anthology of stories of the 2017 Las Vegas music concert mass shooting told in a graphic novel format. The shooting resulted in 58 deaths and injured more than 500 people.  Where We Live is an unusual graphic novel as it has both fictionalized cartoons and cartoons from eyewitnesses.  Several themes are discussed such as gun control, a compassionate society, the stigma of mental health, and how communities persevere after a tragedy.

All of the 90 cartoonists used bold, vivid colors in their comic strips which was what initially made me interested in the book at my local bookstore. After reading the back cover blurb describing the book I decided that I had to buy it.

After beginning to read, I had to put the book down several times because the darkness of the stories was overwhelming. There were many eyewitness accounts in the book's 331 pages. They were riveting but the fear and grief expressed in them consumed my spirit because the darkness in each of the stories never seemed to end for me while I was reading. Each comic strip exuded so much emotion that it was hard to handle. One or two short essays on the beginnings of guns in the U. S. is included and I learned a few facts from them. However, even the essays exuded negative emotions.

Where We Live is a difficult read. I can understand why the editor, Will Dennis, included all of these comic strips  in the book. He is from Las Vegas. If you are from Las Vegas, the fear and grief is one you share with the cartoonists. For me, who doesn't live there, it seemed to be over kill. While I understand this is an anthology of comic strips its impact on me was one of horror, too much horror to be affected by the social commentary. It meant nothing to me. All I felt was the fear of the people who were present at the shooting. I do not know if that was the editor's intention or whether this book was written for the people of Las Vegas.

4 out of 5 stars.

The Mueller Report

I was at Barnes and Noble earlier in the week and found The Mueller Report for sale in two formats.  One was published by the Washington Post newspaper and the other one was published by Skyhorse Publishing.

There are slight differences between the two books.  Both contain the full redacted version of the report. How that redaction is shown differs in each book.


The Washington Post version has articles in the beginning of the book as well as the indictments of the people who were indicted by the Mueller Team in the back of the book. The other version only has an article by attorney Alan Dershowitz in the front of the book. The redactions in the Skyhorse version are shown only with [redaction] in between sentences. The Post version has page after page of blackened out paragraphs for the redactions. This makes the redactions seem more sinister than what we have been told they are about, i.e., national security matters.

The Mueller Report has citations on each page showing where information came from. For example, information may have come from an interview with Donald Trump, Jr. on a particular date. In the Post version of the Report the citations are on each page. The Skyhorse version has them all at the back of the book. Clearly, the Post version is a better read because of the placement of these citations.  Both books have Attorney General William Barr's letter to Congress wherein he summarized the Report.

Which version should you choose?  I did not want to be influenced by any articles before reading the actual report itself so I didn't read them initially. I wanted to form my own beliefs. If you have watched cable news then you know that Alan Dershowitz loves Trump and the Washington Post doesn't. If you lean right or left politically you may want to make your choice that way. The Washington Post version is easier to understand because the citations from where information came from are on the same page where the information is stated. The Post version is much larger but is only $3 more expensive.

I am not going to state what I believe about the Report, Barr's summary or the articles. My only recommendation is that you read the Mueller Report itself before reading the Barr summary or any articles. Form your own conclusions before reading about someone else's conclusions. Whichever one you choose it will be a collector's item in decades to come. My copies are already on the bookshelf next to The Pentagon Papers.

The Enemies of Versailles

The Enemies of Versailles is the final book in the salacious Mistresses of Versailles trilogy by Sally Christie. Louis XV has spent a few years getting to know his unmarried daughters since his last mistress died, the Marquise de Pompadour. He has not had much interest in women for four years. He was devastated by the death of the Marquise. However, four years and 100+ pages later he meets thirty year old Jeanne Becu, later known as Madame du Barry, and falls in love.

This love affair is different from Louis' earlier mistresses. I am assuming it is due to him now being 60 years old. He has a hard time getting her installed at Versailles because a woman already presented at Court must present her. No one will. Jeanne grew up in a brothel and worked as a prostitute herself later in life. The aristocracy will not accept her as the King's mistress. I see him as not trying that hard to help her since he gets the opportunity to sleep with her daily anyway. He does not seem as enamored with her as he was with his earlier mistresses or she would have had a bedroom next to his at Versailles in no time.  Eventually she gets a home an hour outside of Versailles, with travel time Louis would not have been able to stand with his prior mistresses. He was too eager for them.

There is nothing steamy in this novel as there was in the first two novels of the trilogy. It is all about Court intrigue with the spinster daughters plotting silliness and the grandson, Louis XVI, not being able to consummate his marriage.  The book was not interesting. I expected to devour it as I had with the first two books but it took me two weeks to read it. What a disappointment!

The virginity of the daughters and the dauphine, Marie Antoinette, was written in a more titillating manner than the sections where Jeanne was with Louis in the bedroom.  I thought it odd at first but then realized that these women were the enemies of Jeanne and perhaps the book was really about them, the enemies of Versailles. In a trilogy titled the Mistress of Versailles you would expect the books to be about the mistresses but maybe I got this one wrong. There were, in fact, more scenes written about Louis' family than about his mistress. It all ended with the French Revolution and the guillotine which I also thought was odd since the trilogy was about Louis XV.

This was a most unsatisfying end to the trilogy. It might be because the truth about Louis' last relationship was boring and the author didn't have much to work with but it just didn't sizzle.

3 out of 5 stars.

The Gown

I was supposed to receive an advanced review copy of The Gown from the publisher in October, 2018 through the Early Reviewer's Program at Librarything but, sadly, it never arrived in the mail. I took the book out of my local library as soon as it hit the shelves. The Gown is the story of Queen Elizabeth II's wedding gown.

The story begins by introducing the characters who work for Thomas Hartnell, the designer of the wedding gown as well as the introduction of a parallel plot. However, this introduction was 140 pages long. 140 pages out of a 370 page book is a long time to wait before a reader gets to the point of a book, in this case, working on Elizabeth's wedding dress.

The two main characters Ann Hughes, an English girl, and Miriam Dassin, a French immigrant who survived Nazi France, were embroiderers who worked on the wedding dress in 1947. In Toronto in 2016 Heather Mackenzie discovers in a box left to her by her grandmother some embroideries that matched those on Queen Elizabeth's wedding gown. Heather also finds an old photo of her grandmother with the now famous artist Dassin. She travels to London to learn more about her grandmother's past. The story alternates between the 1947 plot and the 2016 plot.

The story had a slow start. Once the characters began working on creating Elizabeth's dress, the book became exciting. The seamstresses and embroiderers were under great pressure to keep the dress's design a secret. Some were used by reporters masquerading as boyfriends in attempts at getting inside information on the gown. Even the parallel plot became more exciting too.

The two main female characters were quite interesting. They were strong women, unusually strong for the era. Miriam was a French Jew who was sent to the Ravensbruck concentration camp in Germany. Within months of her arrival in London she is working on a royal princess's gown.  That is an incredible turnaround for a one year period of time.  Ann has her own rite of passage but since I don't want to give away any more spoilers, I will leave her story out of my review.

Despite the slow start, this was a wonderful story. The reader could feel the emotional drain of WWII on England before the announcement of Elizabeth's engagement. Her happy announcement catapulted the nation out of its feelings of depression into joy. Perhaps any happy event would have done the trick but it was Elizabeth who got the job done. This begs the question whether her connection with her subjects was strong from this time forward because people remember how they felt during the time of her wedding.

At the conclusion of the story the author interviewed Betty Foster who was one of the four seamstresses who created Elizabeth's gown.  This interview gave me goosebumps as it validated the story I just read.

4 out of 5 stars!