Always Never

Always Never is the story of two old friends who spent one night together 40 years ago. The story is told in reverse order with the first pages devoted to their reunion. Each chapter a prequel until the final chapter which shows them meeting for the first time. The book consists of one volume. It was originally published in France in 2020 but was published in English in May 2021.

The story begins with Ana and Zeno finally retiring and giving their romance a chance to bloom while they both still have time left. Each chapter steps further back and shows the two lovers touch and go courting through phone calls and letters. Ana didn't wait long after Zeno left to find herself a husband. Zeno was a drifter who spent time on boats while he worked on his dissertation.  He left behind a family owned bookshop that Ana wanted to destroy for a public works project. It took Zeno 40 years to complete the dissertation and as soon as he finished it he looked up Ana. Ana had just retired as the mayor of an Italian city that is remarkably similar to Venice. 

The artwork consists of line drawings with bright color schemes. The drawings have a French flair even though the story takes place in Italy. The color scheme changed according the location that scenes were happening in. Pages depicting sunny days are colored in orange, a greenhouse location is colored in green and night time and rainy scenes are done in blues and purples.

Always Never is a fun senior romance. Highly recommended.

One Girl Missing

One Girl Missing is the 11th Detective Gina Harte crime thriller from Carla Kovach but the first that I have read. I must say that I have been missing out on alot of good reading. One Girl Missing was a fantastic read. The series takes place in Britain during the present era and this installment of the series was published on March 4, 2022.

The publisher's summary:  

Five-year-old Cally waits in her pretty pink bedroom for the sound of the front door opening and her mother’s sweet voice in the hall. But when the doorbell finally rings, and Cally creeps out of bed to peer through the banister, a large man in uniform is all she sees. Her mother is missing...

Teacher Annabel Braddock was last seen drinking at the local pub with her best friend, Jennifer. Witnesses saw tears running down her cheeks, and friends say she was having problems with a colleague at work, and that her marriage had broken down.

But as the two women hugged goodbye, neither noticed the car speeding towards them. As the dust settled, Jennifer lay unconscious on the ground and Annabel was nowhere to be seen. She’d never abandon her little girl, so did someone snatch her?

As family crowd around Jennifer’s hospital bed, hoping she’ll wake up, police visit Annabel’s home and her inconsolable daughter, Cally, tells them she had seen a man outside staring into her room as she climbed into bed that evening. Was it her childish imagination, or had someone been watching Annabel’s home?

When Jennifer finally opens her eyes and tells the police what happened that night, it’s clear there are plenty of people with a reason to harm Annabel. With an unpredictable husband, a colleague who denies harassing her and a neighbour who seems to know her every move, could she be in imminent danger? As the hours turn to days, will little Cally ever see her precious mother again? Or will she be next?

This book is unputdownable. I read it in one sitting and it seemed that it took no time to read it, thanks to the super fast pace. The investigation into the hit and run had many layers. While there was alot happening in the story, it was not difficult to follow. There were numerous twists, turns, and red herrings that kept me wanting to keep reading.

The setting was not stated but with all of the British slang words and the division of job titles in the police department, I knew that it had to be in Britain. Some of the slang I couldn't figure out but the meanings were somewhat obvious from the context. The main character is, of course, Gina Harte, and her co-workers are the secondary characters. It's odd, but the two female victims were not discussed much as characters. They figured in the investigation but that is about all we read about them. 

If you like crime thrillers or police procedurals, you will want to read this novel.  5 out of 5 stars.

Mid-year Status of Challenges

I have done pretty well on my reading challenges this year. There are three challenges that I have not started yet: Vintage Scattergories, Six Shooter Challenge and the Creativity Challenge. I may forego them however. There are three challenges that I have completed and they are the Finishing the Series, What's in a Name Challenge and Cruisin' Through the Cozies Challenge.  There are at least two more cozies that I want to read next month though. For all of the others here are my stats.

Calendar of Crime:  7 out of 12 books read

Chunkster:  11 books read, no limits

Cloak and Dagger:  33 out of 35 books read

Color Coded:  7 out of 9 books read

Comics and Graphic Novels:  25 out of 52 books read

Historical Fiction:  19 out of 25 books read

Library Love:  13 out of 24 books read

Monthly Key Word:  7 out of 12 books read

New Release:  28 out of 30 books read

Nonfiction Reader: 1 book read, no limits

As you can see I am close to completing all of my challenges!

Regarding the Matter of Oswald's Body

Regarding the Matter of Oswald's Body is a 5 part online comic published by BOOM! Studios in November 2021. It is a crime thriller set in Texas where President Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963 by Lee Harvey Oswald. The Kennedy assassination has spawned many conspiracy theories: mafia involvement, the second gunman, government cover-up… but the most important chapter of this sordid tale may just be the theory that the body buried at Oswald’s Rose Hill gravesite is not actually Lee Harvey himself. Meet the ragtag group of “useful idiots” – a wannabe cowboy from Wisconsin, a Buddy Holly-idolizing (former) car thief, a world-weary civil rights activist ready for revolution, and a failed G-Man who still acts the part – who are unwittingly brought together to clean up the crime of the century, and specifically deal with the matter of Oswald’s body.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this story. I know most of the conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination but never heard of the one about Oswald not being buried in his grave at Rose Hill Cemetery in Fort Worth, TX. I searched Wikipedia regarding this conspiracy to see what information was out there about Oswald's body being stolen. I found that his body was exhumed 18 years after his death as there were questions whether a Soviet spy, who was an Oswald lookalike, was buried there instead. The body in the grave was Oswald though. The characters in the story indirectly show that they killed Kennedy and used Oswald as the fall guy.  Jack Ruby, who is the person who shot Oswald, was not mentioned in the comic. I thought that was strange. The premise for the story was good. However, the author played too much with the facts and we don't need any additional false theories about Kennedy assassination out there. 

A paperback copy of the series will be published on August 30, 2022 by BOOM! Studios. I don't think that I will be buying it for my print collection. 3 out of 5 stars. 

Stacking the Shelves #18

There a couple of graphic novels that will be published later this year that I have pre-ordered. Roberto Saviano's I'm Still Alive will be published on October 11, 2022. The novel is the author's memoir of his life as a journalist whose mission is to expose and survive the mafia. The author lives in Italy and he uses literature and investigative reporting to tell the economic reality and business of the Camorra family. He has received death threats from the Casalene clan, a cartel of the Camorra, and since October 13, 2006 has lived under police protection. 

Invisible Wounds has also been written by a journalist, Jess Ruliffson. Ruliffson interviewed many returning soldiers of the Afghan and Iraq wars for five years. He met them wherever they were living, from Georgia kitchen tables and New York City libraries to dive bars in Mississippi. All of them were grappling with reconciling their wartime experiences and their post-war lives.  Some grappled with their gender and race also.

Guy DeLisle's World Record Holders is the book that I am anticipating the most. I have all of DeLisle's graphic travelogues and loved them. This book will be published on August 9, 2022.  It is a memoir of the author and has comic strips about his childhood and post-fame encounters with readers. One of the strips reveals DeLisle visiting an exhibition of his work where he is confronted by an angry spouse who blames him for destroying her marriage. He is one of the few graphic novelists that every comic fan will read. I expect that the book will be great.

Vann Nath: Painting the Khmer Rouge

This is a graphic biography of Vann Nath, a Cambodian painter. Nath used his art to fight against the tyranny of the Khmer Rouge. In 1978, the young painter was arrested by the Khmer Rouge, the violent and totalitarian Communist Party of Kampuchea that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. Imprisoned in the infamous Tuol Sleng prison, better known as S-21, painting became synonymous with survival for him. Ordered, like many Cambodian artists and craftsmen, to put his talent to use to glorify his captors, upon his release he continued painting, this time, to remember and pay tribute to the victims of Pol Pot's regime.  The only reason that he survived is because the man running the prison needed someone to paint of portrait of their supreme leader, Pol Pot. Nath became the most celebrated survivor of the prison. He died in 2011.

I learned much from this book. I knew that the Khmer Rouge were brutal but had never read about any specifics from their reign of terror. Vann Nath's graphic depictions of the torture he experienced in S21, which he painted after his release, brought it to life. The story is unsavory but sometimes the truth is brutal. At the back of the book are copies of the paintings Nath painted for the regime during his incarceration. I like his style and wonder what subjects he would have painted if his life had not been so difficult. 

If you love history, you should read this book. 5 out of 5 stars.

Booth

I had high hopes for this book about the family of James Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln.  It started out dull and continued to be so throughout the book. The family dynamics were interesting, though, but I felt that it could have been written more exciting than it was.

The publisher's summary:

In 1822, a secret family moves into a secret cabin some thirty miles northeast of Baltimore, to farm, to hide, and to bear ten children over the course of the next sixteen years. Junius Booth—breadwinner, celebrated Shakespearean actor, and master of the house in more ways than one—is at once a mesmerizing talent and a man of terrifying instability. One by one the children arrive, as year by year, the country draws frighteningly closer to the boiling point of secession and civil war.

As the tenor of the world shifts, the Booths emerge from their hidden lives to cement their place as one of the country’s leading theatrical families. But behind the curtains of the many stages they have graced, multiple scandals, family triumphs, and criminal disasters begin to take their toll, and the solemn siblings of John Wilkes Booth are left to reckon with the truth behind the destructively specious promise of an early prophecy.

Booth is a startling portrait of a country in the throes of change and a vivid exploration of the ties that make, and break, a family.

It was interesting to read that John Wilkes always had tendencies toward supporting southern causes, including slavery. He was the only member of his family to not associate with the family's black employees. All of their employees were free as the patriarch was an abolitionist. While the story was a little boring, I am glad that I read the book. It is important to know all of the factors that made John Wilkes Booth kill Lincoln. The author stated in an interview that she did not want to write a book about John Wilkes but rather about the family.  She felt that John Wilkes craved attention and she did not want to give him the satisfaction of a book about him. Thus, his birth does not happen until page 59. When I read that he tortured animals, beat people up and loved guns from an early age, I realized that he was always going to turn out to be an assassin or serial killer.  We all have read the news stories about killers and their childhoods, which predict their future. With an absent father and a mother not interested in raising her children, John Wilkes fit the recipe for becoming a dangerous person.

Booth is an enlightening book about a dysfunctional family that changed the course of American history.  3 out of 5 stars.

Can't Wait Wednesday #13

Yesterday I discovered that Fabrice Moireau has finished another watercolor sketchbook. The Normandie Sketchbook is for sale in his native France. Unfortunately, it is in French. Usually his books are also published in English a year later but the publisher issued a statement that there were no plans to reprint the book in English.

I am in a quandary. Should I buy the French book or not? I spend more time looking at the drawings than reading the descriptions of the subjects and learn so much about perspective from them. I am inclined to just buy the book now. However, I don't want to end up with 2 copies later on. What do you all think?

In the Flood

Trapped and separated by an apocalyptic rainfall, Mike and Clara, devoted husband and wife, have sworn to find their way back to one another.  Rising waters are threatening the dream home that Mike built but they quickly discover that the rain, and their predicament, is not what it seems. Clara was/is a singer who does magic tricks with cards. Her singing and tricks are half of the story. The main thrust of the story is whether they can they figure out the grand trick that's being played on them and overcome it to reunite.  In the Flood is a surrealistic comic by Ray Fawkes. Comixology has collected all of the installments of the series into one volume which they published in March 2022.  I obtained a digital copy of the book from them.

I have no idea what this story is about. There didn't seem to be any purpose for the storyline, if there is one.  While I was reading, I thought that I would figure out the plot toward the end of the book. I didn't. The art was done in manga style and I liked the color scheme of bright pink and blue.  The scenes with Clara were pink and those with Mike were blue. Other than that, I cannot comment any further on the book.  No rating.

Stacking the Shelves #17

I just purchased a Kindle copy of Bill Rivers' Last Summer Boys. I needed to find a book title with a season in the title for the What's in a Name Challenge. It is a coming of age story about a boy from Appalachia during the summer of 1968. 

When thirteen-year-old Jack Elliot overhears the barbershop men grousing, he devises a secret plan to keep his oldest brother, Pete, from the draft. He believes that famous boys don’t go to war and that he’ll make his brother their small town’s biggest celebrity. Jack gets unexpected help when his book-smart cousin Frankie arrives in their rural Pennsylvania town for the summer. Together, they convince Jack’s brothers to lead an expedition to find a fighter jet that crashed many winters ago—the perfect adventure to make Pete a hero. But with a greedy developer determined to flood their valley, a beautiful girl occupying his middle brother’s attentions, a wild motorcycle gang causing trouble in town, and a disturbed neighbor setting fires, Jack realizes it isn’t just Pete who needs saving.

This isn't the usual type of book that I read but I am still looking forward to reading it.

Rising Tiger

Rising Tiger is Brad Thor's 23rd Scot Harvath spy thriller. All of the books in the series to date have been fabulous. However, with Rising Tiger Brad Thor is beginning to slip.

The publisher's summary:

An unprecedented, potentially nation-ending threat has materialized on the world stage. Fearful of the global consequences of engaging this enemy, administration after administration has passed the buck. The clock, however, has run out and doing nothing is no longer an option. It is time to unleash Scot Harvath.

As America’s top spy, Harvath has the unparalleled skills and experience necessary to handle any situation, but this assignment feels different.

Thrust into a completely unfamiliar culture, with few he can trust, the danger begins mounting the moment he arrives. Amidst multiple competing forces and a host of deadly agendas, it becomes nearly impossible to tell predator from prey.

With democracy itself hanging in the balance, Harvath will risk everything to untangle the explosive plot and bring every bad actor to justice.

As I mentioned above, the book was no where near as good as the others in the series. In fact, it was rather dull. It's hard to believe that Thor wrote it as the writing formula is quite different from his earlier books. Harvath did not approach his investigation in his usual manner. In addition, there is no suspense. When Harvath meets with his Indian counterpart they have boring conversations about food and '70s music. There is an alternating plot involving Asha Patel of India's Defense Department Special Ops Division and this plot was also dull. I had to skip pages in order to stay awake so I have to ask again:  Did Brad Thor write this book?  

This was a disappointing read but I have noticed that when a series gets to be as long as this one, the author usually has 1 or 2 setbacks. 2 out of 5 stars.

Can't Wait Wednesday #12

I am so excited for the publication of Dan Silva's newest spy thriller in 13 days!  Silva writes the Israeli spy Gabriel Allon series and there are currently 22 books in the series to date.  The time of year when his books are published coincide with two of my other favorite authors, Steve Berry and Brad Thor. The month that these three release their latests is always a good reading month.  This month is it! 

In Portrait of an Unknown Woman our legendary spy and art restorer Gabriel Allon has finally severed ties with Israeli intelligence and settled quietly in Venice. His wife Chiara has taken over the day-to-day management of the Tiepolo Restoration Company,and their two young children are discreetly enrolled in a neighborhood scuola elementare. For his part, Gabriel spends his days wandering the streets and canals of the watery city, bidding farewell to the demons of his tragic, violent past. However, when longtime friend and art dealer Julian Isherwood asks Gabriel to investigate the circumstances surrounding the rediscovery and lucrative sale of a centuries-old painting, he soon discovers that the work in question, a portrait of an unidentified woman attributed to Sir Anthony van Dyck, is almost certainly a fiendishly clever fake.  

It's gonna be great!

The Omega Factor

The Omega Factor is Steve Berry's 21st novel. He writes treasure hunt mysteries featuring Cotton Malone and Casseiopeia Vitt. However, Omega is a standalone novel. Another installment of the Cotton Malone series will be published in 2023.

The story centers around UNESCO investigator Nicholas Lee, who works for the United Nations’ Cultural Liaison and Investigative Office (CLIO). Nick’s job is to protect the world’s cultural artifacts—anything and everything from countless lesser-known objects to national treasures. When Nick travels to Belgium for a visit with a woman from his past, he unwittingly stumbles on the trail of a legendary panel from the Ghent Altarpiece, stolen in 1934 under cover of night and never seen since. Soon Nick is plunged into a bitter conflict, one that has been simmering for nearly two thousand years. On one side is the Maidens of Saint-Michael, the Vulture, a secret order of nuns and the guardians of a great truth. Pitted against them is the Vatican, which has wanted for centuries to both find and possess what the nuns guard. Because of Nick the maidens have finally been exposed, their secret placed in dire jeopardy—a vulnerability that the Vatican swiftly moves to exploit utilizing an ambitious cardinal and a corrupt archbishop, both with agendas of their own. Nick Lee must confront a modern-day religious crusade intent on eliminating a shocking truth from humanity’s past. Success or failure—life and death—all turn on the Omega Factor.

I liked this new character Nick Lee. His job for UNESCO gives him many opportunities to be involved in interesting investigations. While I miss the Cotton Malone character, I hope Nick returns in another book. I also liked these gun-toting nuns. Whoever said nuns have to be meek and mild? The nuns in this particular order must train to be able to defend their secret places. Their training reminded me of the type that Cotton Malone had. 

The Pyrenees Mountain setting was new to me. The mountains divide the France/Spain border and there was some action in the plot from both sides. Also, I enjoyed reading about the religious history of the Cathars as well as Marian theology. I had no knowledge about either before reading the book. The Cathars had some beliefs that I would not describe as Christian yet the church has romanticized them. As the author said in his Writer's Note, if the faithful wanted to believe in doctrine that was wrong, the church would go along in order to keep them happy.  A happy church member is a member that continues to give money. In addition, I learned alot about painter Jan van Eyck. His most famous work, the Ghent Altarpiece, is featured in this story and I think I can now talk about him with my artsy friends well enough to look smart.

The Omega Factor itself was not mentioned in the story until the last 40 pages. I can see why Berry had to wait to  bring it up but usually he gives his readers a hint early in his books as to what the main character is searching for. The plot did not suffer though. Omega is a fast read and highly entertaining.

5 out of 5 stars.