In a Dark, Dark Wood

Mystery novelist Leonora  Shaw lives a solitary but comfortable life in London.  One day while checking her email she finds an invitation to a hen weekend for Clare Cavendish, a friend from childhood whom she hasn't spoken to or seen for ten years.  After some urging by a mutual friend, Nora reluctantly agrees to go and finds herself at a mysterious house with a group of near-strangers, deep in the forest far from the city.  Quickly, old rivalries and new relationships bubble to the surface and the weekend turns violent, leaving Nora battered and bruised in a hospital bed.  As she struggles to reconstruct the sequence of events that brought her there, secrets emerge about her past and her present that force her to question everything she knows about herself and everyone she has ever loved.

While I was aware of what a hendo, or hen weekend, is before reading the book, it probably would have been helpful to American readers to have this British term defined in the beginning of the story.  You basically know from the start that inviting your fiancé's ex-girlfriend to your hendo will not have a good outcome.  However, the advertisement of this book as a psychological thriller falls short. It just wasn't suspenseful and during the first half of the book there were a few boring sequences.  I was not engaged until the latter third of the plot.  

The assumed wooded setting, taken from the title, is not the true setting.  Most of the events take place in a house owned by a relative of one of the characters.  While the house is located in the woods, all of the action takes place inside.  The plot is revealed through dialogue, both inner and spoken, from the characters.  Speaking of the characters, only one was interesting to me and she was a foil for the main characters.  All in all, this was an OK book, nothing to write home about.

3 out of 5 stars.

Midnight at Malabar House

This is the first book in a new historical crime fiction series that features Persis Wadia as India's first female detective.  It takes place in Bombay during 1949.

The publisher's summary:  

As India celebrates the arrival of a momentous new decade, Inspector Persis Wadia stands vigil in the basement of Malabar House, hone to the city's most unwanted unit of police officers.  Six months after joining the force shw remains India's first female police detective, mistrusted, sidelined and now consigned to the midnight shift.  And so, when the phone rings to report the murder of prominent English diplomat Sir James Herriott, the country's most sensational case falls into her lap.

As 1950 dawns and India prepares to become the world's largest republic, Persis, accompanied by Scotland Yard criminalist Archie Blackfinch, finds herself investigating a case that is becoming more political by the second. Navigating a country and society in turmoil, Persis, smart, stubborn and untested in the crucible of male hostility that surrounds her, must find a way to solve the murder  - whatever the cost. 

The plot could have been interesting but the book seems to have been written as historical fiction instead of the historical crime mystery as it has been advertised.  There were more details concerning what people wore, where they lived and the history of Partition, than clues in the mystery of who committed the crime.  The pace was excruciatingly slow and I found myself skipping pages without missing anything important. Only the final thirty pages were written crisp as Persis began her big reveal of the killer.

Sadly dull. 2 out of 5 stars.

Women Discoverers

 

This small comic book contains the biographies of 30 female scientists. A few of these biographies are merely written in paragraphs while five are done in 20+ page comic strip panels.  The ladies that are featured in the book are:

• Marie Curie (Poland, France) Physics/Chemistry
• Francoise Barre Sinoussee (France) Biology
• Donna Theo Strickland (Canada) Physics
• Dorothy Vaughn (USA) Mathematics/Computing
• Ada Lovelace (Britain) Mathematics/Computing
• Emilei du Chatelet (France) Mathematics
• Emmy Noether (Germany) Mathematics
• Grace Adele-Williams (Niger) Mathematics
• Hedy Lamaar (Hungary/USA) Engineering
• Katherine Johnson (USA) Mathematics
• Marthe Gaetier (France) Pediatrics
• Maryam Mirzakhani (Iran/USA) Mathematics
• Rosalind Franklin (UK) Physics/Biology
• Sophie Germain (France) Mathematics/Physics
• Irene Joliot-Currie (France) Physics/Chemistry
• Jocelyn Bell Burnell (UK) Astrophysics
• Mae Jemison (USA) Medicine/Space Exploration
• Stephanie Kwolek (USA) Chemistry
• Grace Murray Hopper (USA) Computing
• Xie Ye (China) Chemistry

I found the book informative.  Many of these ladies I had not heard of before. Rosalind Franklin stood out in my mind as there is a medical school in my city that bears her name.  I thought Hedy Lamar was an actress.  While she did begin her career in acting she moved into science during WWII. Also, I was not aware that Marie Curie was born in Poland.  She moved to France to study at the Sorbonne and stayed there both as a teacher and a researcher.  

To say that the book will be inspiring for young girls is a given.  Most of these women grew up in societies that did not allow women to work, let alone get an education and a job.  Their trials when they were young can only give hope to today's young girls, who also have personal or family objections to overcome.

A great read!  5 out of 5 stars.

Royal City

I just finished Royal City Volumes 1 through 3.  The comic was written by Jeff Lemire and published in 2017 and 2018.  The comic is about a troubled family, the Pike family, and the town they live in.  The City of Royal City, a once thriving factory town, is slowly disappearing as residents flee for other neighborhoods where they can find jobs.  The comic is a continuation of Lemire's Essex County comic.  

Patrick Pike, a fading literary star, reluctantly returns to his home town after his father suffers a stroke.  He becomes drawn into the dramas of his two adult siblings, his mother, and his browbeaten father, all of whom are still haunted by the death of the youngest brother Tommy.  This family saga covers a span of thirty years.  

I hated for the story to end.  I loved all of the characters and felt like a was a member of the Pike family too.  It would be awesome of the author picked up this story and continued it.  Although this is a comic, the character development and intensity of each family member's reaction to the death of Tommy at age 14 could easily have been written as a fiction novel.  The looseness of the comic format has not hindered Lemire.  The story has a definite beginning, middle and end.  I also liked that the artwork was done in color.  Black and white comics just don't grab my attention.

5 out of 5 stars.

Can't Wait Wednesday #4

I am so glad that March has arrived.  I have been anxiously awaiting fashion designer Jenny Packham's book "How to Make a Dress - Adventures in the Art of Style."  It will be published tomorrow, March 4, 2021.  Packham is a British designer known for her couture bridal dresses.  She has dressed celebrities and royalty since 1988 and works from her London home.  I understand that this book will delve into her search for creative inspiration and show readers her studio.  Instead of being a sewing book, How to Make a Dress is about Packham's design process, how she sketches and selects fabrics.

Stacking the Shelves 2

Earlier in the week I ordered off of Ebay a copy of the Sarawak Sketchbook by watercolor artist A. Kasim Abas.  I have 29 sketchbooks by various artists and Sarawak is the last one that I needed to complete my collection.  It has been difficult to find as the artist is from Malaysia. These watercolorists travel to well known cities and spend time there painting famous buildings and landscaping. The books can serve as travelogues as well as artist books. They are all published on watercolor paper to enhance the artwork.

Sarawak is located on the island of Borneo, which is part of Malaysia.  It is Malaysia's largest state and home to a multitude of ethnic groups with colorful material cultures.  It's unique history as the land of the "white rajahs" means that it architecture is varied in styles. Grand colonial edifices stand next to longhouses and modern buildings.  The artist has handwritten notes for each drawing/painting that explain what he has depicted.  I assume that there will be introductory chapters on Sarawak's history as this is information that has always been in these types of books.

Delays in postal service are awful lately.  The seller has said that I may not receive the book until April 1.  Six weeks is a long time to wait but I just have to have this book.  I will be patient. 

Can't Wait Wednesday #3

 

Can't Wait Wednesday is a meme hosted by Tressa at the Wishful Endings blog. The meme features books you wish to read, preferably ones that haven't been published yet.

Marie Moinard will be publishing a new graphic novel on March 1, 2021.  Women Discoverers: Top Women of Science features 20 female scientists who enabled the world to advance in all areas of science. Christelle Pecout illustrated the comic.

A few of the women featured include astronaut Mae Jemison and chemist Marie Curie. The book sounds similar to Penelope Bagieu's Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World.  I loved this mini-biography of 30 famous and not so famous women. Both books will be inspiring for young girls and older women alike who are thinking about possible careers and career changes. I have pre-ordered a copy of the book. Let's hope the postal service can deliver it without too much delay. Service is awful lately.

The Binding

The Binding is set in a fantasy world where binders have the power to erase bad memories from clients who want to forget.  It took me awhile before I figured this out as our protagonist began his apprenticeship working on actual book binding covers. For some, being able to forget a traumatic event is a godsend. For our protagonist Emmett Farmer, his binding caused tremendous confusion and illness.  The story is written in three parts. The first part shows Emmet's current situation. The second delves into the past and shows how he ended up being sent away by his family.  The third part takes the story forward into his future and the resolution of the plot.

The book begins with teenager Emmett Farmer working in the fields of his family's farm.  A letter arrives that summons him to an apprenticeship as a bookbinder. This vocation arouses fear and superstition in his small community.  However, his parents feel that he cannot afford to refuse the offer.  He has been ill in the past year and the illness has caused the family to be embarrassed by his symptoms.  His father has difficulty understanding how this happened to Emmett because he had kept a pure home.  

Emmett has always been attracted to books, even though they are strictly forbidden.  His bookbinding master, Seredith, tells him that bookbinding is a sacred calling and that he was born to be a binder.  Under this old woman's watchful eye, Emmett learns how to hand-craft elegant leatherbound volumes. Each volume will capture a memory.  If you want to forget something, a binder can help you erase it.  The binders then place the memory inside a book, which the binders always store in a vault owned by the binder.  After Emmett has settled in his new occupation he discovers that one of the books in the vault has his name on it.  He has no idea that he was ever bound or what memory could have been erased from his mind.

This book was amazing.  It has parts of magic and gay coming-of-age that I normally don't like reading about but I could not stop reading this book.  The imaginary past of an alternate England in the 1700s was somewhat difficult for me to grasp.  Fantasy is not a genre that I read and it took some getting used to.  The idea that you can have someone erase a traumatic memory is appealing to me.  If binders were real, I might visit one.  To be technical, The Binding seemed sort of the "don't ask, don't tell" scenario currently playing out in the U. S.  When parents have their kid's memories erased, they leave their children with a sense that they have done something wrong but cannot be absolved of their wrong-doing. This cannot be comfortable for those who have been bound.

4 out of 5 stars.

In the Blood

In the Blood is a genealogical mystery featuring Jefferson Tayte as the geneologist.  The geneological mystery sub-genre is a new favorite for me. This is book one of seven novels to date and it is fantastic.  

Jefferson "JT" Tayte has been working on a project for Walter Sloane. Sloane believes that he is related to a loyalist family that fled to England at the end of the American Revolutionary War.  The family seems to have disappeared after leaving the American shore and Tayte has been tasked with finding a link between Sloane and the Fairborne family. With few clues to the family history left to do via a phone, Sloane orders him to catch a plane ASAP for England and finish the research within a week.  Tayte is afraid of flying but he cannot give up another assignment because of his fears. It will affect his ability to get new jobs. The research leads him to the short life of a woman in Cornwall, a writing box and a possible dark secret about the Fairborne family.

I loved this book!  The mystery is not just about the resolution of Sloane's genealogy but also about why several minor characters were killed. JT believes that everything is connected to his research and he needs to find proof. Each new lead turns into a plot twist that moves the plot along quickly.

The JT character is sympathetic given all of his phobias and difficulties communicating with British record office staff. He is a goofy introvert.  JT's nemesis, Peter Schofield, is hired by Sloane to assist him after JT's first few days in England.  Sloane wants fast results and believes that JT needs assistance. However, JT does not trust Schofield because he senses that Schofield wants to take all of his clients away. On this particular assignment Schofield is trustworthy but  JT does not realize this until Schofield is killed. This is a shame because Schofield could have provided some conflict in future novels. The author has not given the reader any other prominent characters other than JT.  The secondary characters are so far in the background that I would categorize them as third party characters, if there is such a thing.

I can't wait to read the remaining books in the series.  To date, there are six more novels in the series. 5 out of 5 stars.

Stacking the Shelves

I have added three books to my Kindle library this week.  All of them were purchased for the Color Coded Reading Challenge.

Shadows of the White City is the second book in the Windy City Saga series by Jocelyn Green.  I haven't read any book in the series yet.  This one was just published on February 2, 2021 by Bethany House Publishers.  Sylvie Townsend is the main character and she desperately wants to have a family.  After taking in Polish immigrant Rose Dabrowski, the seventeen year old Rose goes missing at the World's Fair.  Law enforcement will not investigate (After all, it is just a Polish woman) so Sylvie asks one of her boarders, Kristof Bartok, for assistance.  Kristof is Rose's violin instructor as well as the concertmaster for the Columbian Exposition Orchestra and he is vital for navigating the immigrant communities in Chicago where the story takes place.  

The Woman in Blue was written by Elly Griffiths who I haven't had the pleasure of reading yet.  The book is the number 8 in the Ruth Galloway Series and takes place in Little Walsingham, an English town known for religious apparitions.  When Ruth's friend Cathbad sees a woman in a white dress and blue cloak standing in a cemetery, he believes that she is a vision of the Virgin Mary.  A woman wrapped in a blue cloth is found dead the next day. Ruth's friend and Anglican priest Hilary begins to receive threatening letters.  Are the two crimes connected? Probably.

Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth Century China was written by Jung Chang, another new author for me.  They were known in China as being the most famous sisters.  One was married to Sun Yet-sen, another became Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the other became Chiang's main advisor.  All three ladies remained close even though they embraced different political views.  

Killer Deadline

Lauren Carr writes stand alone cozy mysteries. I have to wonder, though, if Killer Deadline is the beginning of a series as the front cover references "a Nikki Bryant cozy mystery."  The characters are perfect for one and the main character has a job as a TV news station owner, which will give her a good reason for being an amateur sleuth.  Add in Nikki's photogenic "ugly" dog and you have the ingredients for a perfect series.

This awesome story begins with Nikki's return to Pine Grove, Pennsylvania after working as a journalist for several years in Las Vegas and Washington, D.C. With her mother's decision to retire from the news business, Nikki comes home to take over the station that her father began over thirty years ago.  Soon after her arrival Nikki finds the dead body of her news anchor Ashleigh Addison, who is also her childhood rival.  The night before her death, Ashleigh was at a party to welcome Nikki where Ashleigh stated that she would be airing live an explosive news story the next day.  The question for the police and for Nikki  is whether her news story is connected to the murder of Nikki's father in his office at the station.  

Killer Deadline was an enjoyable read. It is a modern cozy with accomplished, power hungry women. Ashleigh is the traditional female character who cares more about appearances than substance. The fact that she is the novel's victim is telling for me.  I would expect the aggressive female character to be the victim in a cozy.  I like to see this connection to the modern world. 

The plot was a straightforward murder mystery.  It moved fast with the murder of Nikki's father taking precedence over Ashleigh's murder. I love it when the mystery formula is followed faithfully. Of course, you can never go wrong by using a dog as a character. 

5 out of 5 stars!

The Grand Odalisque

Carole and Alex are childhood friends who become partners in crime.  They specialize in art thefts and have been working as a team for nine years.  The story begins with them successfully pulling off the theft of a painting at the Musee D'orsay in Paris. After a deserved vacation, they receive a request to steal a painting from the highly secured Louvre Museum. The Grand Odalisque is a painting done by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Odalisque means concubine and that is the subject matter of this artwork and, hence, the title of the comic.  The mission is quite daring because it must be done during daytime. Knowing that they will need a third assistant to pull off this assignment, they hire a third person for their team as well as a diplomat's son who also happens to be an arms dealer.  

The relationship between Carole and Alex is just as prominent as the heist itself.  The two women have different personalities and strengths but also recognize this difference.  They are able to rely on each other's strengths in order to get the job done. Some times it becomes problematic. For instance, when the heist at the Musee D'orsay is occurring, Alex is not able to help Carole because her boyfriend is dumping her via a text message.  The two authors of this comic are men. Would a female writer allow this to happen?  

This is a fun, short book of 125 pages and brightly colored illustrations. Bastien Veves illustrated the comic. 5 out of 5 stars.

Can't Wait Wednesday #2

The Can't Wait Wednesday meme is hosted by Tressa at the Wishful Endings blog. Here, you write a post about a book you want to read, preferably one that hasn't been published yet. 

One of my favorite authors has a new book coming out on March 1, 2021. Ellen Crosby's 11th wine country cozy mystery, The French Paradox, adds an historical aspect to the plot, a first for the series.  Our main character Lucie Montgomery, owner of a Virginia vineyard, discovers that her grandfather had a romantic relationship with Jackie Kennedy Onassis in 1949 during Jackie's junior year abroad in Paris. During her time in Paris, Jackie purchased several paintings of Marie Antoinette by an unknown artist. These paintings suddenly appear for sale in the present time.

From what I have read about this novel I gather that this is also an art mystery. In addition, it also seems that Lucy's grandfather will be more prominent than Lucy herself. What confuses me is that the earlier books in the series have always been straight murder mystery novels where the murder occurs in Lucy's vineyard. Lucy's disability has also been featured prominently in the series. She has a mobility impairment from an auto accident and needs to use a cane. How all these issues become tied together will be interesting to discover. I hope that this installment of the series won't be a disappointment. Other authors I read who crank out a book year after year tend to get bored with their series and change the formula for the genre as well as the setting of the books. It usually doesn't turn out well but we will see how Crosby's newest novel reads. Perhaps there is a murder somewhere in the plot and maybe the vineyard will be the spot for all of the action. I will have to wait for March to find out.