Stacking the Shelves #8

The Stacking the Shelves meme is hosted by the Reading Reality blog. It was originally hosted by the Team Tynga's Reviews blog and now is solely hosted by Reading Reality. 

I have been anticipating the arrival of Bob Woodward's latest book on the Trump Presidency and the transition to the Biden Administration.  Peril will be published in two weeks on September 21, 2021 and I have already pre-ordered my copy. I love that Woodward always interviews a few hundred people before writing his books. With Peril, Woodward interviewed more than 200 people at the center of the turmoil that our nation went through during the early months of the year. While I enjoy Woodward's books, I am almost afraid to relive those months of uncertainty. However, I know it is better to be an informed citizen. Peril is a perfect description of this transition period. We all felt it, regardless of our political leanings.

Let's Not Talk Anymore

Let's Not Talk Anymore portrays 5 generations of women from the author's family in a graphic memoir. Their stories are told from when they were all fifteen years old. In 1902 the author's great-grandmother Kuan's life is told. In 1947 her grandmother Mei's story is told and in 1972 her mother Bing is portrayed. In 1998 author Pixin’s own life is shown and in 2032 the author's imaginary daughter Rita's life is given. These stories alternate back and forth in time and span a century. 

Weng Pixin's lineage is full of sorrow. Great-grandmother Kuan is sent away from her family in China to Singapore, grandmother Mei's mother allowed her to be adopted by a neighbor to help with the housework, Bing's father left the family home, while Pixin feels isolated from her mother. Through these generational traumas, fractured relationships are passed down from mother to daughter every generation. It all seemed sad to me. These ladies were miserable but tried to hide their feelings. I am not sure why but I wonder if this is a way for the Chinese to save face? 

The artwork was drawn in colorful comic book panels. It was a little hard to tell the difference between the women given that they look alike. Weng Pixin changed the facial coloring and hair styles to distinguish them from one another. She used an interesting mixed media approach to the drawings by using poster paint, oil pastels and watercolors. The style of the drawings is simple, almost childlike. 

My main takeaway from the book is that the way in which each of us handle adversity comes from imitating the way our elders handled it. This is a depressing thought because it seems that we are all doomed to repeat mistakes from the past. I liked that the last nine pages were of butterflies ready for flight. Perhaps there is a silver lining in every family's story.

3 out of 5 stars.

Rebecca and Lucie

Rebecca & Lucie in the Case of the Missing Neighbor is a charming murder mystery in comic book format. Amateur sleuth Rebecca Girard is on maternity leave and breastfeeding her baby when she sees two men carrying something heavy into a white minivan. When she finds out that a man from her neighborhood, Eduardo Morales, has gone missing, Rebecca decides to look into the matter.  Eduardo had been working as a caregiver to an elderly man in Rebecca's neighborhood and many of her neighbors knew him. Rebecca's investigation is unique. She performs it while juggling to carry her 8 month old baby Lucie everywhere she goes.

As a murder mystery, this story has all of the features of a literary novel. We have a unique amateur sleuth, a crime, and several suspects. We also have several twists in the plot to confuse the reader. The suspension of belief surrounding Rebecca as a detective is not hard to fall into, mainly because this is a comic. However, I believe that the author came up with a creative idea for a sleuth. From the title "in the case of the missing neighbor" it appears that this story may end up being a series. I hope so as this was a fun read.

The book is advertised as a "maternity leave mystery complete with postpartum physiotherapy." How awesome is that! I loved reading this book and am rating it 5 out of 5 stars.

The Dying Day

Vaseem Khan is one of my favorite authors. However, I don't like everything that he writes. The Dying Day is book 2 in his Malabar House Series featuring Persis Wadia as Bombay's only female police detective. It takes place in the 1950s. In this installment of the series Persis is searching for a missing man and a valuable stolen manuscript, a six hundred year old copy of Dante's Divine Comedy. While this book will not be published until November 2, 2021, I was able to obtain a Kindle version of it.

John Healy is a British scholar who the police assume has stolen the manuscript. He goes missing at the same time the manuscript disappears from the library at The Asiatic Society where he was responsible for its care. Together with an English forensic scientist named Archie Blackfinch, Persis finds a complex series of riddles set in verses that need to be resolved in order to locate the man and the book. However, a body is found first, adding to her investigative demands.

The Dying Day was not a hit for me. The story was interesting at first but then uninteresting after a few chapters. This dichotomy repeated itself throughout my reading of the book and I frequently felt bored. Normally I would love a book that has riddles to be solved. This one did not showcase them well. There was no suspense surrounding the finding of the riddles or after they were figured out.

The Persis character seemed a little different from book one. She frequently expressed anger when having to interview men who thought they were her superiors. There were no inner thoughts of angst which I expected. She was not as interesting as she was in book 1. None of the English characters captured my imagination either. 

The Dying Day is not Khan's best work. 2 out of 5 stars.

Sweet Tooth Compendium

I was excited to get the Sweet Tooth compendium edition for my birthday last month. I had heard that this edition sold out on its publication date three months ago so imagine my surprise to receive it in the mail. Being late to comics, I hadn't previously read this story. The Compendium contains all 40 issues of the comic. The covers for each issue are also included in the book. 

Sweet Tooth takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where some of the characters are human/animal hybrids. The main  character is a young boy named Gus, a half human, half deer hybrid. He has antlers growing out of his forehead and is a chocoholic. Gus has been raised by his Bible thumping father in isolation after a manmade pandemic that began ten years earlier. When his father dies Gus is on his own. He soon meets Jepperd, a drifter who promises to help him. The two of them begin a journey into a devastated American landscape in order to locate The Preserve, a refuge for kids who are hybrids.  

The Compendium Edition, published by DC Comics, has been printed on semi-glossy paper. The pages are glued to the cover. I wish that it had been smyth-sewn because it's 915 pages will probably come loose. However, it was certainly put together better than my Saga Compendium, published by Image, and the GSM of the paper is higher.

This comic is going to look good on my bookshelf. I love to see these chunky books lined up in a row. I am rating Sweet Tooth 5 out of 5 stars.

Top Producer

Laura Wolfe is a new author for me. I purchased this book because it takes place in Chicago where I live. Wolfe is a fantastic writer and I don't know why I haven't heard of her before. The suspense in this novel is high and I couldn't put it down. The book was published in 2020.  

The story opens with Mara Butler getting fired from her job at Avery Consulting. She has just broken up with her boyfriend and purchased a new condo. When she sees an add for an assistant to a real estate agent, Jacqueline Henderson, she applies and to her surprise is hired. Jacqueline is one of Chicago's top realtors. While Jacqueline dresses the part of a smart agent she has a crooked moral compass. Her quest to win the prestigious Top Producer Award by the Chicago Board of Realtors has led her to think outside the box. Mara begins to earn alot of money under Jacqueline's tutelage. She earns enough to pay the mortgage on her new condo, a new car and pay some of her cancer-stricken sister's medical bills. However, Mara becomes entangled in Jacqueline's unorthodox methods of getting real estate listings from clients. After a competing realtor suddenly dies, Mara is afraid of becoming the next victim. 

Top Producer is a fast paced novel that depicts the cut throat world of real estate. I have to wonder, though, if all realtors go to the same extremes as Jacqueline. My gut tells me yes. Each extreme act ratchets up the suspense because the reader does not know how far Jacqueline, or even Mara, will go to be successful. Mara's parents are disappointed in her for losing her first job so quickly and Mara feels the pressure to succeed at something, anything. It's interesting how Mara tells herself that Jacqueline's questionable ethics are probably not illegal but Mara really doesn't know what is legal in the real estate world. She is not a trained realtor. 

I loved the Jacqueline character more than Mara. Jacqueline is a perfect villain. She does not care who she hurts in her rise up the ladder at Greystone Realty. Today we would probably label her as a narcissist. Regardless of how confident Jacqueline appears, she is just as insecure as Mara. Her parents are disappointed in her too and she was rejected by her last boyfriend. She just doesn't let people know what her true feelings are.

I loved the Chicago setting. As each address or building was mentioned I knew exactly where they were located. The familiarity added to my enjoyment of the novel. However, readers not familiar with Chicago will understand which buildings are known as high end and which are not. With Chicago being known for being kind to mobsters, organized crime was in the back of my mind as I read about each questionable action by Jacqueline. I didn't know if Jacqueline was affiliated with a mob family or just taking advantage of everyone in town expecting to come across them regularly. Non-Chicagoans will probably not sense this feeling but I don't think it will affect your enjoyment of this novel.

5 out of 5 stars.

The September Society

The September Society is a historical mystery that takes place in Oxford and London in Autumn 1866.  It is the second novel in a series that features amateur sleuth Charles Lenox. It was published in 2008. 

The publisher's summary:  

"In the small hours of the morning one fall day in 1866, a frantic widow visits detective Charles Lenox. Lady Annabelle's problem is simple: Her beloved son, George, has vanished from his room at Oxford. When Lenox visits his alma mater to investigate he discovers a series of bizarre clues, including a murdered cat and a card cryptically referring to The September Society. Then, just as Lenox realizes that the case may be deeper than it appears, a student dies, the victim of foul play."

This was light reading at its best. While light, the book had all the features of a perfectly plotted mystery. There were lots of twists as the resolution of the murder was slowly revealed. The whydunnit held most of the mystery than either the whodunnit or howdunnit. We really don't know what the September Society is until the last pages, which was a satisfying way to end the story. 

I liked the Oxford collegiate setting. I am not that familiar with Oxford and went back and forth between the story and a map of Oxford itself. If future books in the series take place here I will be reading all of them. I also liked the London setting in the Victorian era. While I am familiar with London today, it was good to read about it from another time period. Learning about these two places was an enjoyable part of the reading experience.

The September Society is the quintessential British fiction novel. Much of the action takes place in pubs and private gentleman clubs. Many of the characters belong to four or five gentleman clubs and each of them have a different character to them. The main character Charles Lenox is quirky, as we Americans call this type of character.  He bumbles when it comes to romance with the opposite sex and thinks way too much about what is the right thing to do. His language is more British English than American English. I enjoy a good British yarn!

The novel was pleasantly entertaining. I can honestly recommend it to Anglophiles and mystery lovers.  5 out of 5 stars.

Dominus

Dominus follows Steve Saylor's Roma and Empire historical novels. This epic story begins in AD 165 during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, a time when there was peace throughout the Roman Empire. However, this novel showcases the decline of the empire. It spans 160 years and 7 generations.

The publisher's summary:  

"Marcus Aurelius, as much a philosopher as he is an emperor, oversees a golden age in the city of Rome. The ancient Pinarius family and their workshop of artisans embellish the richest and greatest city on earth with gilded statues and towering marble monuments.  Art and reason flourish but history does not stand still. 

The years to come bring wars, plagues, fires, and famines. The best emperors in history are succeeded by some of the worst. Barbarians descend in endless waves, eventually appearing before the gates of Rome itself. The military seizes power and sells the throne to the highest bidder. Chaos engulfs the empire.

Through it all, the Pinarius family endures, thanks in no small part to the protective powers of the fascinum, a talisman older than Rome itself, a mystical heirloom handed down through countless generations. But an even greater upheaval is yet to come. 

On the finger of society, troublesome cultists disseminate dangerous and seditious ideas. They insist that everyone in the world should worship only one god, their god. They call themselves Christians. Some emperors deal with the Christians with toleration, others with bloody persecution. Then one emperor does the unthinkable. He becomes a Christian himself. His name is Constantine, and the revolution he sets in motion will change the world forever."

I knew this would be a great book and I read slowly to savor it. I loved it. Not knowing much about Roman history, Dominus gave me the basics on the last 150 years of the empire. I knew there were alot of minor emperors toward the end of Rome's primacy but was not aware of how many there were. There were dozens of emperors who were in power only a few weeks or months. Constantine is the last emperor featured. I thought it was interesting how he moved toward Christianity. I had always thought that Constantine accepted this faith tradition quickly but Dominus shows that Constantine had a gradual acceptance of it and that it was made because Constantine could see the political advantages of accepting Christianity.  Dominus paints a different picture of how early Christians were perceived by non-Christians. I guess if you are raised to believe that multiple gods are necessary to achieve success, believing that god is just one person was a large stretch for them to make. Another interesting fact is how the arguments among the Christians over doctrinal matters were perceived by the Romans. Infighting was seen as a weakness of the religion. Conversely, there were no fights over the peculiarities of the Roman gods. I don't understand why the Romans did not see that the emperors' worship of the gods forced them to worship the gods likewise. They just followed what the emperors' were doing.

I was surprised by the level of insanity displayed by the emperors. We read about their need for monuments of themselves. What struck me was that they needed to destroy the monuments of their predecessors. Why? No one cared about earlier emperors, only the current one. Most of them loved violence and thought too highly of themselves, believing that because they were emperor that they were more skilled at fighting than gladiators. Another unusual aspect to these emperors was the need to deify their deceased children. The Senate was responsible for voting on their deification, which they did only to protect themselves from a raging emperor. This all seems like craziness to my modern way of thinking.

After finishing the book I googled the Pinarius family. I discovered that this was a historical family with 1,000 years of recorded history. Since the novel ends with Constantine requesting that the family move with him to Constantinople, I wonder what happened to them while living there. Surely there must be a record of them there but I did not find any.

Dominus is a fantastic novel. It would be nice if there was another book in this series but I understand that it is a trilogy and one that ends with Dominus. I highly recommend the book. 5 out of 5 stars.

The Cellist

The Cellist is the 21st book in Dan Silva's Gabriel Allon spy series. Allon, an art restorer on the side, always gets pulled away from his art to go after another terrorist on behalf of the Israeli government. Here, we have Allon dealing with everything from Russian money laundering to an attempt on the life of the president of the U. S. The story explores one of the preeminent threats facing the West today - the corrupting influence of dirty money wielded by Russia. 

The publisher's summary:

"Viktor Orlov had a longstanding appointment with death. Once Russia's richest man, he now resides in splendid exile in London, where he has waged a tireless crusade against the authoritarian kleptocrats who have seized control of the Kremlin. His mansion in Chelsea's exclusive Cheyne Walk is one of the most heavily protected private dwellings in London. Yet somehow, on a rainy summer evening, in the midst of a global pandemic, Russia's vengeful president finally manages to cross Orlov's off his kill list.

Before him was the receiver from his landline telephone, a half drunk glass of red wine, and a stack of documents. The documents are contaminated with a deadly nerve agent. The Metropolitan Police determine that they were delivered to Orlov's home by one of his employees, a prominent investigative reporter from the anti-Kremlin Moskovskaya Gazette. And when the reporter slips from London hours after the killing, M16 concludes she is a Moscow Center assassin who has cunningly penetrated Orlov's formidable defenses.

But Gabriel Allon, who owes his very life to Viktor Orlov, believes his friends in British intelligence are dangerously mistaken. His desperate search for the truth will take him from London to Amsterdam and eventually to Geneva, where a private intelligence service controlled by a childhood friend of the Russian president is using KGB style active measures to undermine the West from within. Known as the Hayden Group, the unit is plotting an unspeakable act of violence that will plunge an already divided America into chaos and leave Russia unchallenged. Only Gabriel Allon, with the help of a brilliant young woman employed by the world's dirtiest bank, can stop it."

This is another fantastic novel from Dan Silva! It has all the characters we have known throughout the series plus a few unnamed ones, i.e., the Russian president and an erratic American president refusing to concede an election. This particular installment of the series is more current with the world's political situation than the earlier ones. The plot includes a global pandemic, Russian interference in American elections as well as Russian looting of the assets of the West. The author must have written fast to include these events into his story.

As I said above, the characters were all known to the series. There weren't any new ones, which I was expecting. It was fun to read about their exploits since their last entry into the series. The Israeli characters showed growth and I suspect that one or more will not make in to the next book because of their age or retirement. Some were barely mentioned due to their age. Some will probably be promoted. It shows that Silva is constantly keeping their duties changing as they advance or decline in their careers.

All in all, this was a riveting read. I highly recommend it. 5 out of 5 stars.

Viral

Viral is Robin Cook's 38th medical thriller and it is my favorite from among all of his books. The ending was unexpected and extremely satisfying that I am tempted to begin rereading it ASAP.  

The main character, Brian Murphy, and his wife and child travel to Cape Cod for a two week vacation. When wife Emma begins to get flu-like symptoms, they cut their vacation short and return to New York City after one week. On the drive home, Emma begins to convulse. When the family reaches their local hospital Emma is given a room in the ICU area. She is diagnosed with eastern equine encephalitis, a/k/a EEE. It is a rare and highly lethal mosquito-borne viral disease that she probably caught during one of their barbeques on the coast. To make matters worse, Brian and Emma's daughter Juliette begins to exhibit alarming physical and behavioral symptoms too.  Emma's hospital stay is rather expensive. When Brian receives a $221,000 bill that his insurer refuses to pay, citing dubious clauses in their health insurance policy, he decides to get to the bottom of the hospital's predatory billing practices.  

My love of the story is based on my own experience with encephalitis when I was 8 years old and my 35 year history dealing with insurance companies after a catastrophic injury in a car accident. The author gives us the basics on encephalitis, the treatment and etiology of which has changed drastically since I had it 55 years ago. I ended up googling it and discovered even more information that was geared to my experiences over all these years.  Cook is known for writing the etiology of whatever disease he writes about in his books. It becomes part of the plot action. Naturally, I was drawn to this particular story.  

The writing was superb. The pace was super fast because Brian needed to save the lives of his wife and child. The reader doesn't know how things will turn out, just that there is a sense of urgency. Brian had to fight this battle on three fronts:  the disease, the insurer and the hospital. I believe this alone will connect with every reader. All Americans have been put through the ringer with medical matters. The ending was quite different from what we have seen from Cook in the past. I won't elaborate, but I loved it!

Another aspect to the plot is how asian mosquitos came to be located on the U. S. eastern coast. This mosquito has a distinct look: 2 white dots on its wings. Climate change is the reason that this type of mosquito traveled from the tropics, where it is normally located, to the eastern coast of the United States. Later on in the story, the reader sees that this particular mosquito is somewhere else on the planet. I don't want to be a spoiler so I will leave it at that.

The hospital setting was where much of the action took place. Cook shows us what we are all familiar with: hours long waits in the emergency room, seemingly uncaring staff, and, of course, the nasty billing department who call you nonstop trying to collect. The plot goes into hospital billing practices that I was not aware of. It has made me determined to check my bills in the future now that I know how this system works.

I thought the characters were sympathetic.  We don't know much about Emma because she becomes ill early in the story. Daughter Juliette is four-years-old and cries constantly. She is catered to quite a bit. I can certainly feel for Brian. Having been through his circumstances more than once in my life, I felt his pain. His emotions ran high throughout the entire story. Although Brian is a problem solver by nature, he just cannot penetrate the medical system to resolve his issues. His line of thinking is insightful for anyone new to this experience. There are 4 other characters of note. His mother, mother-in-law, business assistant and a new friend named Jeanne all help him steer through the mess that healthcare is today. Jeanne, in particular, becomes a major part of the story. She is a child psychologist who lost her husband a year ago via the same situation that Brian now finds himself in.

Viral will make you read your insurance policy and search for medical billing advocates.  I loved it and rate it 5 out of 5 stars.

Book of the Month: August

This second book in the Jaipur Trilogy is my best read for August. Indian fiction is one of my favorite kinds of books to read and when I see this kind of book I grab it. This second book concentrates more on the Malik character than the Lakshmi character. Lakshmi is the main character of the trilogy but she did not have much part in the murder investigation. Her protege handled most of it. However, it felt good to see how these two characters are evolving. I will be sorry when the trilogy ends but hopefully, the author will continue to write Indian fiction. She is great at this genre.

Every review of the book that I have seen has been positive and I think historical fiction fans are going to love it. I cannot recommend it more highly.

Apricots

I reviewed Sally Christie's fantastic Versailles trilogy 2 years ago. I was not aware that she wrote any other books so when this mystery appeared in my Amazon feed, I grabbed it. 

Apricots takes place in a town called Apricots in 1792 St. Domingue (present day Haiti). During the largest slave rebellion that the world has ever seen, 1,000 plantations were burned on the northern plains and 2,000 whites were killed. The rebellion was put down but slaves still controlled the northern plains. A young widow, Rose Fongravier, is struggling to manage her crumbling coffee plantation when she discovers a dead body at the bottom of her garden. The island residents wonder if there was an accident or a murder and whether it will begin another slave revolt. With 400,000 slaves and 30,000 whites, a rebellion could be started at any time. The story covers the span of merely one day within its 392 pages, with a cross section of the plantation's inhabitants offering their understanding of who is responsible for the dead body in the garden. 

I had a hard time keeping track of all the characters in the beginning of the story. After a few chapters, though, it was easy to keep up with them. The story is tightly packed with action and the reader gets to see the awful conditions that the slaves had to live with on the coffee and sugar plantations. Their stories were heartbreaking. Can you imagine being free for 60 years and then enslaved again on the whim of another person? Promises made to slaves by their owners in wills were simply discarded by their heirs; the law be damned.

The characters were fully developed and reflected the era in which they lived. I think the author's choice to have the events occur within one day made the pace of the story uber fast. I found it to be unputdownable.

The book is based on a true story and I feel it should be recommended reading. 5 out of 5 stars.

Factory Summers

Factory Summers is another great autobiography from cartoonist Guy Delisle. He has written several travelogues from following his wife to Jerusalem, Pyongyang, Shenzen and Burma while she worked with Medecins Sans Frontieres. Here, we have the story of Delisle's four summers as a teenager working for a pulp and paper factory in Quebec City where he grew up.

Factory Summers has alot of dry humor within its pages. Delisle describes his co-workers as sexist, telling dirty jokes on a daily basis. As a union employee myself, I can say they are typical union workers. LOL. If they can find a way to relax on the job, they do it. It's not that they are forgoing the hard work their jobs demand. These fellows work with huge machines that require constant cleaning up and fixing and the areas they are located in have no air conditioning. There is danger of getting hurt every day. The factory was built in 1927 and there had not been any changes to the building or the machinery over the years. This was an antiquated system that Delisle was dealing with. With 12 hours shifts required 6 days a week, I doubt that he would be allowed to work here as a youth if the factory was in the U.S. I thought it was a cruel job for a sixteen-year-old kid and cannot believe he did the work without questioning the rules. If it was me working there, I would have filed a complaint with OSHA for unsafe working conditions.

The story itself was well told. The monotony of the work days are shown by both dialogue and drawings. The only reprieve the author had was by drawing comics and making plans to attend animation school in Toronto. His relationship with his father, who got him the job, is also a part of the story. The book opens with Delisle having his annual visit with his father, divorced from his mother, and ends with his death. The relationship frames these summers working at the same plant his father worked at. 

I highly recommend this one. 5 out of 5 stars.