Gone

Gone is a spellbinding novel about a mother and son who have been abducted at a gas station. The son is only four-years-old and has a severe form of epilepsy and autism. His mother Elizabeth manages his illness well while her husband is gone weekdays and night. She is a creature of habit, puts gas in the car on Monday, picks up prescriptions on Tuesday, etc... Her habits should make it easier for her husband to search for her. On one Monday morning, Elizabeth is buying gas for her car and has left her son in the passenger seat while she pays for the gas. While she is at the cash register she sees a man approach her car and get in. Elizabeth hurries to the car and is able to jump into the backseat as the car takes off, leaving her purse behind. The driver takes her to a hidden cabin in the woods where Elizabeth's husband will never find her. It is up to Elizabeth to figure out how to get herself and her son free. 

This psychological thriller kept me reading all night. The serious nature of the child's medical needs not being met after the abduction give the novel its suspense. The restricted life a person with epilepsy has is shown in detail and it is this circumstance that keeps the reader reading. I found myself routing for the boy and hoped he survived. I did not like his mother though. She was dependent on her husband for everything and got angry when he wasn't around to tell her what to do. She seemed whiny to me. As a feminist I wanted to shake her out of this mindset to freedom. It was odd that she only thought her husband would search for her, not the police. Doesn't everyone know that it is the police's job to look for missing people? Also, I wondered why she thought she couldn't handle her situation. Elizabeth did not really need her husband to help her care for her son. She did this almost daily on her own and was handling the abduction well.

Despite these concerns Gone is a mesmerizing story and I highly recommend it. 5 out of 5 stars.

The Night Gate

The Night Gate is the final installment of Peter May's The Enzo Files series.  I have loved this series since it began and hate to see it end but I understand that authors need variety in their writing to keep it crisp. 

The publisher's summary:

"In a sleepy French village, the body of a man shot through the head is disinterred by the roots of a fallen tree.  A week later a famous art critic is viciously murdered in a nearby house.  The deaths occurred more than seventy years apart.  Asked by a colleague to inspect the site of the former, forensics expert Enzo MacLeod quickly finds himself embroiled in the investigation of the latter.  Two extraordinary narratives are set in train - one historical, unfolding in the treacherous wartime years of Occupied France; the other contemporary, set in the autumn of 2020 as France re-enters Covid lockdown. 

Tasked by the exiled General Charles de Gaulle to keep the world's most famous painting out of Nazi hands after the fall of France in 1940, 28-year-old Georgette Signal finds herself swept along by the tide of history.  Following in the wake of DaVinci's Mona Lisa as it is moved from chateau to chateau by the Louvre, she finds herself just one step ahead of two German art experts sent to steal it for rival patrons - Hitler and Goring. What none of them know is that the Louvre itself has taken exceptional measures to keep the painting safe, unwittingly setting in train a fatal sequence of events extending over seven decades.

The Night Gate spans three generations, taking us from war-torn London, the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, Berlin and Vichy France, to the deadly enemy facing the world in 2020."

I was disappointed in this novel.  There were many passages of writing that were not central to the solving of the crime.  For instance, there was a 40 page section on the military training of women who were going to be dropped into Nazi held France. In addition, the relationship of the characters who were mentioned in the beginning of the book was not explained.  I knew from past books in the series that they were related but could not remember exactly how.  I think the author should have explained who the characters were and what made them tick. There was no development of the characters during the story either so I expected a tighter plot.  I got neither.  As far as the settings descriptions are concerned, I did not feel that I was in Scotland, London, France or Berlin. In the earlier books in the series you could see the Scottish Enzo's semi-assimilation in France where he lived.

What a disappointing end to a great series.  2 out of 5 stars.

Well Behaved Indian Women

Well Behaved Indian Women is Saumya Dave's debut novel.  It is fantastic! Delving into the issues of Indian American culture, Dave explores a mother and daughter's relationship in America. Their origins from India play heavily into how they communicate and how they feel about their lives.  The book is also a family saga as the lives of three generations of women are explored.

The story begins with Simran Mehta always feeling that she is being harshly judged by her mother, Nandini, especially when it came to her writing hobby.  Nandini emigrated to American with her new husband twenty five years ago where she had her children. As a first generation American, Simran was expected to have a professional career. While she is working on a Masters Degree in Psychology Simran drops out of school to pursue journalism. During this time she is planning a wedding to her childhood sweetheart Kunal. They are expected to marry because they have been a couple for a long period of time. However, when Simran meets an Indian celebrity writer sparks fly.

Nandini, on the other hand, has spent her life putting others ahead of her own life. She wants to create an easy life for her children as well as her in-laws.  Nandini has provided her husband's demanding family everything they desire, including free medical treatment.  She also has had to endure the casual racism of her patients. When a colleague offers Nandini a job in another city she has to consider whether to pursue her dream job or focus on being the perfect Indian wife.

Grandmother Mimi Kadakla lives in India. She feels that she has failed her daughter Nandini but has a chance to support her grand-daughter Simran in whatever life Simran wants to live. As life begins to pull Nandini and Simran apart, Mimi is determined to be the bridge that keeps them connected, even as she deals with her own secret burden, an illness. 

I loved this novel.  I read through it in two hours and couldn't put it down. It was interesting to see how these women were trained from birth to be people pleasers, a common trait among Indian women. They all put their dreams on hold to fulfill family expectations, usually expectations that they were not on board with. I cannot imagine doing this myself and wonder why none of these women rebelled against tradition. In addition, the concept of arranged marriages is explored here. The reader learns the pros and cons from how these women's arranged marriages affected their lives.  

Several reviewers have said that books like this one confirm stereotypes of Indian women.  I disagree. It seems to me that when you deny the cultural traits of a given people, you are denying their distinctions in favor of political correctness. People are different. We all know that. The customs and mannerisms that we see of residents from other nations should be celebrated not used to further divide us. We can be multiculturally sensitive without rejecting the culture itself.

5 out of 5 stars!

The Bombay Prince

The Bombay Prince is the third Perveen Mistry historical fiction novel by Sujata Massey. Perveen is the first female solicitor in India and works in her father's law firm in Bombay. This installment of the series takes place in November 1921. Edward VIII, the Prince of Wales and future ruler of India, has just arrived in Bombay for a four month tour of India.

There is local unrest over the royal's visit which quickly spirals into rioting. Perveen Mistry, though, is angered by the death of Freny Cuttingmaster, an eighteen-year-old female college student who has fallen from a second story gallery just as the prince's procession was passing by her college. Freny had visited Perveen two days before asking for legal advice on whether to steer clear of the prince's procession. Every student and teacher at the college were required to attend the procession. To avoid the celebration meant risking expulsion from the school. Freny was a member of the Student Union Club which advocated for eschewing the prince's visit. Independence was the divisive issue here. Some people wanted independence and others didn't. Perveen felt guilty for failing to assist Freny and decides to assist her parents in their dealings with the coroner. When her death is ruled a homicide at the coroner's inquest, Perveen and her father work to see justice done. However, Bombay seems to be erupting as armed British soldiers march in the streets, rioters attack anyone perceived to have British connections and desperate shopkeepers destroy their own wares so they will not be targets of racial violence.

What a wonderful story! I read this novel in one sitting while in the park on a sunny summer day. It was a sweet experience. The plot is intricate yet fast paced. I would say that this installment of the series is a historical thriller, not just a historical mystery, and it is the best novel in the series to date. The writing was tight for a historical novel with the author weaving in historical details and background information without the use of narrative. 

The Bombay setting was described in detail. The reader can feel the tension among the Indians to the Prince's visit as well as their fear of being arrested by the British. With insightful dialogue we read what it felt like to live through the riots and how the city residents dealt with their conflicted feelings concerning independence. Bombay had residents who were Indians, British, Anglo Indians and also Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, Parsi and Christians. Their ability to coexist is a prominent feature although the thin veneer of silence among the groups is sometimes interrupted. 

This is a must read.  10 out of 5 stars!

The Perfect Daughter

The Perfect Daughter is the perfect thriller.  It is a murder, medical and legal mystery with a psychiatric twist. It begins with sixteen-year-old Penny Francone being arrested for the murder of her biological mother. She was found by the police at the crime scene covered in the victim's blood and holding the murder weapon, a knife. To the police, this is an open and shut case and a jury only has to decide whether Penny will spend the rest of her life in prison or in a mental hospital. As Penny awaits trial in the Massachusetts state mental hospital, she is being treated by Dr. Mitchell McHugh, a psychiatrist battling demons of his own concerning his son's drug addiction. McHugh is not sure that Penny really has dissociative identity disorder, a/k/a multiple personality disorder. His testimony concerning her illness will either make or break Penny's defense. Her attorney plans on defending her with a not guilty by reason of insanity defense. Penny's adoptive mother, Grace Francone, believes her daughter is innocent. One of Penny's identities is Eve, a cold woman who she believes is capable of murder.  Penny is a quiet, polite teen. Her other identities include Ruby, a British girl, and Chloe.

We learn alot about dissociative identity disorder (DID). It was quite interesting to read how Penny's doctor planned on figuring out whether Penny had DID or was fooling everyone. His approach was revealing. Before reading the book I did not know how psychiatrists made this diagnosis. Another big part of the novel was Penny's legal defense. The reader learns the requirements of the law in an insanity defense, particularly with a defendant with DID. Penny's lawyer knows what he has to prove and much of the evidence he needs will come from Dr. McHugh. Penny, herself, is not sure whether she committed the crime. The novel is also a classic murder mystery. When Penny's adoptive mother, physician and attorney delve into her past before she was adopted, the reader is treated to an intricate plot that assumes, falsely, Penny had a good reason to kill her biological mother. Without reading the book, you won't know why or how this could have happened. I don't want to be a spoiler so I won't go any further here. However, I will say that there is a surprising ending.

I highly recommend The Perfect Daughter to mystery lovers.  5 out of 5 stars. 

Book of the Month: June

Midnight Fire was my favorite read for this month. It is the second book in the Jagiellon Mystery Series by P. K. Adams. I love that it takes place in Poland and Lithuania, a new, to me, historical setting. The story begins in the summer of 1545 with Caterina Sanseverino Konarska traveling with her ailing son Guilio from their home in Bari, Italy to Krakow. Guilio suffers from mysterious fevers that have stunted his growth. Caterina hopes to see Queen Bona so that she can ask her if Guilio can see a court physician. After meeting Queen Bona, Caterina is allowed to travel to Vilnius where the best court physician is on hand in case crown prince Zigmunt August needs him. However, Bona asks Caterina a favor. Can she dissuade the crown prince from marrying a scandal ridden mistress, Barbara Radziwill? The book was the perfect read, with great characters, a fast pace, and a great plot. Caterina's sleuthing skills are solid and she is able to use her position at court to advance her investigation. Highly recommended for historical fiction fans!

Superman Smashes the Klan

I don't read superhero comics very often. When one of my favorite comic writers publishes one, I read it. I have loved all of Gene Luen Yang's books. Previously he published the Boxers and Saints volumes, American Born Chinese and last year's Dragon Hoops. With this Superman volume Yang takes on the Klan of the Fiery Kross, a pseudonym for the Ku Klux Klan.  

The story takes place in 1946 when teenagers Roberta and Tommy Lee move with their parents from Chinatown to Metropolis, the home of Superman. Tommy makes friends easily but Roberta wants to go back to Chinatown where she was comfortable. One night the Lee family awakens to find that their house is surrounded by the Klan of the Fiery Kross and see a burning cross in their yard. Superman leaps into action but his exposure to a mysterious green rock leaves him feeling nauseous and weak. He is only able to defeat the Klan later with the help of Roberta and Tommy. During this conquest, Superman sees visions of his deceased parents asking why he is only using half of the powers he was born with. Superman works through his memory to figure out what is holding him back.

While this was an enjoyable story of good versus evil, the poisonous remarks of the Klan members against this Chinese family gave it a bad tone. I found it difficult to overcome the hate that sprung from its pages. I presume that this was the effect that Yang was going for and that he presented an Asian family as the victims due to the AAPI discrimination that has been ongoing since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The comic is advertised for young adult reading and I would agree with that. It would be helpful to present the realities of hate to youths, but not those too young for the message.

5 out of 5 stars.

Can't Wait Wednesday #7

I have read every one of Robin Cook's medical mysteries. He is one of my favorite authors. Cook has a new novel coming out in August titled Viral and I can't wait to get a copy of it.

The story is about an east coast family vacationing on Cape Cod during the COVID-19 pandemic. The mother begins to have flu type symptoms while there but while driving home she begins to have a seizure in the car. They immediately travel to the nearest hospital. There, a diagnosis of eastern equine encephalitis is given. The disease is transmitted via mosquito bites that presumably happened while the family was on Cape Cod. It is a rare and usually fatal disease. To make matters worse, their healthcare insurer refuses to pay for treatment, citing obscure clauses in the insurance policy. 

While the scenario seems scary in today's world, given the pandemic, this is definitely timely story and I am looking forward to reading it. 

Credo

Credo is a graphic biography of Rose Wilder Lane. I thought it would be about a suffragette but Rose Wilder Lane is the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Wilder wrote the Little House on the Prairie books. I was not aware that she wrote these books with her daughter making huge edits. The books were written mainly by Lane but the ideas for the stories came from Wilder. 

Lane was an accomplished 20th century writer, feminist, war correspondent, and one of the  founders of the Libertarian Party in the U. S.  She was anti-government and anti-marriage and did not believe that gender should hold anyone back from experiencing all that the world has to offer.  Lane was one of the highest paid female writers in America, traveling all over the world in search of a story.  She even traveled to Korea and Vietnam to cover those wars for the newspapers that she wrote for.  However, she is mainly known as being the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder.  There are several different opinions on how much Lane contributed to the Little House books but the original manuscripts have survived and there is no doubt that Wilder did not know how to write.  Lane rewrote the stories so that they were readable.  What most people do not know is that she wrote biographies and fiction on her own. 

I thoroughly enjoyed the book and read it twice in succession.  It is amazing to me that she was friends with President Herbert Hoover, writer Dorothy Johnson and Johnson's husband Sinclair Lewis.  With these people as friends, I would expect that Lane's name would be easily recognizable.  Unfortunately, it isn't.  She was lucky in her career, raising the glass ceiling for women in succeeding generations.  Her credo was an article she wrote concerning her political opinions.  It was marketed as her credo, hence the name of the book.

Credo was a great history lesson for me and I highly recommend the book.  5 out of 5 stars.

Midnight Fire

Midnight Fire is the second book in the Jagiellon Mystery Series by P. K. Adams. I love that it takes place in Poland and Lithuania. It seems that most historical fiction novels are set in England and France so this series is a breath of fresh air. The story begins in the summer of 1545 with Caterina Sanseverino Konarska traveling with her ailing son Guilio from their home in Bari, Italy to Krakow. Guilio suffers from mysterious fevers that have stunted his growth. Caterina hopes to see Queen Bona again so that she can ask her if Guilio can see a court physician. Caterina had initially traveled with Bona Sforza to Poland when she was engaged to marry King Zigmunt. That story is told in book one of the series Silent Water. Now the king lies on his deathbed and the court no longer seems the lively, cultured place that she remembered 25 years ago. After meeting Queen Bona, Caterina is allowed to travel to Vilnius where the best court physician is on hand in case crown prince Zigmunt August needs him. However, Bona asks Caterina a favor. Can she dissuade the crown prince from marrying a scandal ridden mistress, Barbara Radziwill? For the sake of her son, Caterina agrees but she soon discovers that Zigmunt August will listen to no one, especially when it comes to his mistress. When a murder shakes the Vilnius court, the crown prince immediately suspects his mother's agents. Caterina is thrust again into another investigation. However, she realizes that in trying to clear the queen's name, she has placed herself and her son in danger.

I LOVED this book! It was a perfect read, with great characters, a fast pace, and a great plot. Caterina's sleuthing skills are solid and she is able to use her position at court to advance her investigation. There were two settings here, the Krakow court and the Vilnius court. Both were  built with extravagant furnishings and I loved reading about the palaces and the clothing that the ladies wore. I learned about the Turkish baths that women, as well as men, visited.  I was not aware that women frequented these establishments nor that there were even co-ed baths. The novel is also a well crafted murder mystery that follows the mystery formula flawlessly. If there is anything negative to say about Midnight Fire it is that the first murder does not happen until after I had read a third of the book. This is not really a bad thing as I was captivated by the story up until that point and the story continued to be smooth reading. However, learning that the plot was more than Caterina helping her son and Queen Bona was a little jarring.

If you would like to be transported to a 16th century royal court, Midnight Fire will not disappoint.  The culture of a country not written about before in historical fiction will be enlightening as well.  5 out of 5 stars.

Portrait of Peril

Portrait of Peril is the fifth book in Laura Joh Rowland's Victorian Mysteries.  She previously wrote the Sano Ichero series set in 17th century Japan.  This is the first book in the new series that I have read and I had a little trouble understanding the relationships between the characters.  It probably would have been best if I read the books in order.

The publisher's summary:

"Victorian London is a city gripped by belief in the supernatural - but a grisly murder becomes a matter of flesh and blood for intrepid photographer Sarah Bain.

London, October 1890.  Crime scene photographer Sarah Bain is overjoyed to marry her beloved Detective Sergeant Barrett - but the wedding takes a sinister turn when the body of a stabbing victim is discovered in the crypt of the church.  Not every newlywed couple begins their marriage with a murder investigation, but Sarah and Barrett, along with their friends Lord Hugh Staunton and Mick O'Reilly, take the case.  

The dead man is Charles Firth, whose profession is "spirit photography" - photographing the ghosts of the deceased.  When Sarah develops the photographs he took in the church, she discovers one with a pale, blurred figure attacking the victim.  The city's spiritualist community believes the church is haunted and the figure is a ghost. But Sarah is a skeptic, and she and her friends soon learn that the victim had plenty of enemies in the human world - including a scientist who studies supernatural phenomena, his psychic daughter, and an heiress on a campaign to debunk spiritualism and expose fraudulent mediums.

In the tunnels beneath a demolished jail, a ghost-hunting expedition ends with a new murder, and new suspects. While Sarah searches for the truth about both crimes, she travels a dark, twisted path into her own family's sordid history.  Her long lost father is he prime suspect in a cold case murder, and her reunion with him proves that even the most determined skeptic can be haunted by ghosts from the past."

I had some difficulties with the book. While it is plausible for a husband and wife detective/photographer team to investigate crimes, wife Sarah is doing most of the sleuthing.  Thomas Barrett's role is secondary. Since Sarah is a crime scene photographer for a newspaper, I would expect that her role would either be complementary or equal to her husband's role. Her role did not seem natural to me. Also, I could not believe that both Sarah and Thomas left their wedding ceremony to look into the discovery of a dead body. I can see Thomas doing some investigating since his job is a police detective but I cannot see him giving up attending his wedding breakfast and falling asleep before the marriage could be consummated. It was also hard to believe that Sarah did any investigating at all on her wedding day. She is just a newspaper photographer and has no real purpose in investigating the crime at this early stage. In addition, it was not believable that the married couple would live apart, especially Sarah's living arrangements with another man.  

The solving of the crime was interesting. The reader learns about spirit photographers, something I had never heard of before. The supernatural was not a part of the book, just the history about this common career in Victorian times. There were societies both in favor of this medium as well as opposed to it. The reader learns how these groups operated and the reasons for their beliefs. The subplot concerning Sarah's father seemed a little too farfetched given everything else that was happening. I think the author should have focused on one or two aspects of spirit photography for the plot and left the rest out or wrote it as narrative. However, the whodunnit was shocking as well as the reason for the killings.

3 out of 5 stars.

Home Library Design

I used to have a huge library wall system that was 8 feet long and spanned an entire wall in my home.  I had eight bookcases filled with fiction, cooking and baking, poetry, interior design, art, writing and reference books.  I downsized the library five years ago from 2,300 books to 150 during a move to a smaller home.  I have since purchased more books but am concentrating on acquiring art books only.  Yes, I repurchased some of those lost books on Ebay.  

I miss that library and am keen on creating another one when I move into a larger space than I currently have. One of the new (to me) types of art books that I am interested in concern medieval manuscripts. Of course, I would love to have a few facsimile editions of illuminated manuscripts but they are expensive.  I am still interested in learning more about them and have several books on my amazon wishlist that will help me learn more about medieval manuscripts.  A recent Coursera course on the medieval manuscripts of Western Europe has fueled this interest.

The design that I prefer for my library is to have all of the bookcases next to each other in one long row.  This is not always possible depending on your home layout but I have been lucky so far in the homes that I have lived in. This design creates a stunning look.  

What does your home library look like? Do you place all of the bookcases next to each other or split them up throughout your home?  What is your ideal library?  Let me know in the comments.  

America's First Daughter

America's First Daughter is a well researched historical novel on the life of Thomas Jefferson's daughter Martha "Patsy" Jefferson Randolph. Patsy has to deal with the knowledge that her father loves his country more than he loves his family.  When her mother dies, she rises to the challenge and becomes Jefferson's constant companion and helper.  She even travels with him to France when he is appointed as America's minister to France.  While they are in Paris, Patsy first learns about her father's affair with a slave named Sally Hemings who is the same age as Patsy. Both are fifteen-years-old. She loves appearing at French royal court functions where the dresses, food and atmosphere captivate her.  Here, Patsy falls in love with one of her father's assistants, William Short. Short is an ardent abolitionist and has high ambitions for his political career. Patsy has a dilemma to resolve. Should she follow her heart and marry Short or continue as a devoted assistant to her father? Patsy chooses her father in this impressive historical biography and marries an American instead.

A french royal court setting is always going to be alluring for me. I just love reading descriptions of the food and dresses that the ladies wore. Post-revolution America is not as enticing but the author has written into the plot several controversial topics of the time, some of which I never heard of before and they were quite interesting. The women in the novel had to exert their power indirectly as the men had the real power in the nation and in their homes.  While I know that this just reflected the times, I hate reading about women having to live this way. 

I knew nothing about Jefferson's daughter before reading this book.  She certainly was a plucky character. Patsy's life story included running from the British during the Revolutionary War, handling many of her father's business affairs, helping him run the White House while he was president and, of course, giving birth to eleven kids after her marriage to her American cousin. I imagine that many women of this era had similar life stories to tell and I wish that I could find these stories.  Alas, they were not written down unless they were members of famous families.

The authors also wrote a historical biography of Alexander Hamilton's wife Eliza.  I loved that novel too and hope that this writing duo continues to write about the ladies of our American revolution.  5 out of 5 stars.