The narrator of this story is Frank Drum, a 13-year-old boy who lives in a small Minnesota town with his family: younger brother Jake, who has a severe stutter; older sister Ariel, a talented musician destined for Julliard; father Nathan, an earnest Methodist pastor; and mother Ruth, choir director and superb singer who thought she was marrying a future lawyer and is not happy with her husband's vocation. The Drums are an average family with loving parents and nice children who behave as typical children do.
The book - structured as a mystery - is really about death and faith. As the tale opens it's the very hot summer of 1961 and the town seems to be experiencing more than its share of death. A schoolmate of the Drum brothers, playing on the railroad tracks, is killed by a train - and soon afterwards the brothers find a dead hobo in almost the same spot.
This naturally get the boys thinking about death, and God, and heaven - sentiments apparently reinforced by regularly attending three church services every Sunday where their father preaches, their mother conducts the choir, and their sister plays the organ.
Soon afterwards the Drums experiences a personal tragedy that rocks their world, tests the faith of some family members, and starts to tear the family apart. Some turn to God for comfort, others reject God for allowing such a thing to happen.
As authorities investigate the tragedy, Frank - determined to keep himself informed - snoops around, usually with Jake tagging along. Thus the brothers discover things they shouldn't know, talk too much, and add to the damage themselves.
The book is filled with interesting characters: Gus, a jack-of-all-trades with a drinking problem who served in the army with Nathan;
Ariel's boyfriend, a son of the town's wealthiest family who drives a fancy car and has snobby parents;
Ariel's music teacher and mentor, a blinded, emotionally damaged man who once jilted Ariel's mother;
A deaf, disturbed girl with a passion for gardening;
A crude, bigoted cop whose prejudices get in the way of his job;
A rough-living Indian man who appears a likely suspect;
A family with an abusive father; and more.
The mystery of the book is resolved in a believable fashion and the characters' faith is restored by a small, touching 'miracle'. Overall a good story with a satisfying mystery and a touch of faith that's not overly preachy.
Rating: 4 stars
In this 24th book in the 'Agatha Raisin' series, the private detective is on the trail of a poisoner. The book can be read as a standalone.
*****
People who live in the Cotswold village of Piddlebury are gracious when newcomer Gloria French - who always helps out at church and reads to the elderly - asks to borrow things.....like a bag of flour, a pot, a bowl, a necklace, and so on.
The residents get annoyed, however, when Gloria refuses to return anything....claiming it's all hers. And everyone KNOWS Gloria is the culprit when several bottles of homemade elderberry wine are nicked from a church event.
As it turns out, stealing the wine was a big mistake. One of the bottles labeled 'Very Special' is laced with poison.....and Gloria is found dead.
A village murder is a calamitous event and Jerry Tarrant, head of the Piddlebury parish council, hires private detective Agatha Raisin to investigate the incident. Agatha, who lives in the nearby town of Carsley, is a stout fiftyish Englishwoman with small bear-like eyes, shiny brown hair, and a knack for solving crimes.
Agatha and one of her operatives, a beautiful girl named Toni, take a room in a Piddlebury pub and proceed to investigate Gloria's homicide. They speak to local residents; inquire about the wine; learn what kind of poison was used; etc.
Agatha and Toni discover that many people disliked Gloria, either because she was a thief or because she chased married men. There would seem to be many local suspects, but the townsfolk form a united front and insist 'a passing outsider' must have committed the crime.
A second poisoning with elderberry wine makes this seem HIGHLY unlikely, but the Piddleburians stick to their story. This makes Agatha extremely suspicious and she pursues various lines of inquiry.
Agatha's investigation takes many weeks, during which she makes numerous trips to and from Piddlebury and relies on her friends and co-workers for help. As always Agatha develops a crush on a handsome man - this time it's a traveler called Brian Summers, who's staying in Piddlebury for a rest.
Agatha eventually comes up with a theory that pans out, but puts more than one person in danger.
Favorite recurring characters make an appearance in the story, including: James Lacey - Agatha's ex-husband; Sir Charles Fraith - Agatha's long-time friend; Mrs. Bloxby - the vicar's wife; Roy Silver - Agatha's former employee; and more. Toni, who should know better by now, continues to get involved with older men, and this causes more trouble than usual.
The plot is rather thin, and mostly a vehicle for Agatha's usual antics, such as: chasing a good-looking man; getting jealous when James dates other women; interfering in Toni's private life; dining with Sir Charles (who always 'forgets his wallet'); getting into amusing scrapes; stressing over her weight and appearance; and so on.
The novel is fun for a light read, but it's not among the best books in the series.
3 stars
In this 21st book in the comical 'Pennsylvania Dutch Mystery' series, amateur sleuth Magdalena Yoder - a Mennonite woman who eschews things like television, movies, and dancing - is accused of murder. The book can be read as a standalone.
*****
Though Magdalena Yoder is a strict Mennonite, she's married to a handsome Jewish doctor called Gabe Rosen (aka "The Babester"). Magdalena has an adopted 14-year-old daughter named Alison; a baby boy named Jacob; was elected mayor of the town of Hernia, Pennsylvania; is a clever businesswoman; and owns the profitable PennDutch Inn B&B.
Magdalena is also the co-owner, with Hortense Hemphopple, of a defunct restaurant called The Sausage Barn, acquired as reparations for an attempted murder. Now 19-year-old Hortense wants to re-open the eatery to fund her college education, and she asks Magdalena to help. Magdalena agrees and decides the new place will be an Amish-Chinese fusion restaurant called 'Amish Sensations.'
The restaurant fuels the conflict between Magdalena and her insufferable mother-in-law Ida Rosen, who's attached to her son with steel apron strings. To be near Gabe, Ida set up the 'Convent of No Hope' across from the PennDutch Inn, and made herself Mother Superior to the 'Sisters of Perpetual Apathy', who wear drab robes, have no religious beliefs, and do nothing.
Magdalena and Ida frequently exchange sarcastic repartee, which is part of the fun of the story. For instance, when Ida hears about Asian Sensations she sees an opportunity for the Sisters of Perpetual Apathy, and approaches her daughter-in-law.
Ida: "You vill be needing vaitresses, yah?"
Magdalena: "Yes, but I need classy waitresses, not ones who dress like thirteenth-century monks."
Ida: "Vas dat an insult?"
Magdalena: "No. It was only an objective description of the schmatta that you're wearing."
Ida (to Gabe): "Oy. So new she speaks Yiddish already. I thought she was a shikse, Gabeleh."
In any case, Asian Sensations opens and the entrees are awful, but the desserts are a big hit.
After Asian Sensations gets going, the PennDutch Inn hosts a couple of high profile guests. A conservative magazine called 'The Woman's Place' plans to print an article about Magdalena's B&B, and publisher Gordon Gaiters and his assistant Sarah Conway arrive to interview the innkeeper. Unfortunately, the guests turn out to be snide and condescending, and Magdalena threatens to kill them. Soon afterwards Conway is dead, poisoned by a luscious dessert from Asian Sensations.
The sheriff arrests Magdalena for murder, and the innkeeper - who gets bail from a friendly judge - sets out to prove her innocence.
Though the book is ostensibly a mystery, the detective part of the book takes a back seat to Magdalena's interactions with her family, friends, employees, and the ghost of her granny. These encounters generate a lot of amusing comments about people's appearances, Mennonite culture, what is and isn't a sin, Magdalena's armor-like Christian underwear, etc.
There are also innumerable barbed comments, puns, quips, double entendres, malapropisms, and funny names - like Officer Twaddlebottom and Sissy Sue Sissleswitzer. This kind of thing is fun, but there's too much of it, and too little actual story.
Still, I like Tamar Myer's deft hand with language and her hilarious depiction of an amusement park called Armageddonland. The theme park will sport terrifying passages from the Book of Revelation, and holograms - like horse-sized locusts with giant scorpion tails - that will give you nightmares unless you're saved. Moreover, you get to slay demons, watch sinners die by the tens of thousands, and go on rides over a lake of fire. So that's original!! 😊
This isn't best book in the series, but it's good for a few laughs.
For those who like to bake, the book contains a recipe for 'Death by Chocolate Torte.'
Rating: 3 stars
Two 15-year-old girls, Val and June - who live in the Red Hook area
of Brooklyn - get bored one night and decide to ride a pool raft out
into the nearby harbor.
In the morning an unconscious Val is found near the shore by Jonathan Sprouse, a high school music teacher, and June is missing.
Though
it seems this would be the beginning of a mystery book it's really a
character study of the people living in this run-down Brooklyn
neighborhood.
Jonathan Sprouse is a disillusioned musician who drinks too much and lives in a dive.
Fadi, a delicatessen owner, is trying to keep the neighborhood connected with his newsletter.
Monique and some of her fellow teens are hanging out on park benches, making music.
Thugs are using drugs and harassing girls who wander into their corners.
A homeless community is making do in an abandoned shipyard.
Ren, a talented young graffiti artist, is making incredible murals.
Cree, whose cop dad was shot years before, is trying to get out of Red Hook but his mom won't leave the place her husband died.
There
are psychic women who talk to ghosts, drunkards, angry parents, shop
owners, average families who do weekend barbecues.....all rubbing
shoulders in this small area.
Pochoda does a masterful job
developing the characters and evoking the ambience of this Red Hook
neighborhood. I almost felt like I lived there myself. In the end we
learn what happened out in the harbor on the night June went missing and
the Red Hook residents get on with their lives.
Good book. Highly recommended.
Rating: 4 stars
In this 17th book in the 'Charlie Parker' series, the intrepid private investigator is chasing a long-time enemy, and trying to prevent Armageddon. The book can be read as a standalone but does refer back to earlier books in the series.
*****
Private investigator Charlie Parker suffered an almost insurmountable blow when his wife and young daughter were murdered years ago. Since then Parker has dealt with the perpetrator and gone on to fight evil in many forms, using his own supernatural abilities to good advantage.
Parker's most recent, and perhaps most dangerous, nemesis is a man who calls himself Quayle. Quayle, who's seemingly immortal, has a sinister cohort called Pallida Mors - an albino woman who stinks of decay. Together, Quayle and Mors are trying to reassemble an occult book called 'The Fractured Atlas', a magical tome that will bring on the apocalypse. Quayle and Mors have been torturing and killing people to locate the Atlas's missing pages, and have even arranged for unrelated murders to throw the police off their trail.
Parker, who's a consultant for the FBI, is on the trail of the evil duo with his colleagues Louis and Angel.
The hunt takes Parker from his home in Portland, Maine to Arizona, then on to Amsterdam and London - where Quayle is holed up in a secret enclave.
The story is very complicated. It's a police procedural combined with scenes of a bizarre religious sect called the Congregation of Adam Before Eve & Eve Before Adam; incitation of conflict between Muslims and right wingers; an occult church whose stained glass windows come to life; a questionable student-teacher relationship; captives imprisoned forever, with their eyes and lips sewn shut; an archaeological site in Hexhamshire, England that harbors demonic murderous plant roots; and more.
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There's also a large cast of characters, including FBI agents; police detectives in Amsterdam and London; archaeologists; book collectors and sellers; murderers drawn into Quayle and Mors' schemes; female victims and their families; fictional historic figures; a farmer and his loyal dog; and so on.
The book has many vignettes of torture and violence, so consider yourself warned.
The story also has some light moments, like when Parker shows up in Arizona and his novice FBI handlers tell him their instructions are 'not to let him shoot anybody.' Parker's guides in Europe have the same instructions, enhanced by regulations that forbid foreigners to carry weapons. So it's pretty clear that Parker's reputation precedes him. 🙂
I thought this 720 page book was overly complex, with too many characters and too many tangential scenes only vaguely related to the main narrative. Still the central story line is compelling, and readers who like supernatural mysteries - and John Connolly fans - would probably like the book.
Rating: 3 stars
In 1999, thirteen females in the West Adams section of South Central Los Angeles were brutally murdered. Most of the victims were sex workers, the one exception being a teenage babysitter named Lecia, who was the killer's last victim.
The perpetrator wasn't caught and some people think the cops didn't try too hard because the women were 'throwaways.'
Fifteen years later, in 2014, prostitutes in West Adams are being murdered again, in the same manner as before. The cops resist the idea that a serial killer is active again and they CERTAINLY don't want the new deaths connected to those in 1999.
The story, which focuses on six women in West Adams, is set in 2014, with flashbacks to 1999.
- Feelia was a streetwalker in 1999, but gave up the life after surviving a deadly attack. The incident seems to have disturbed Feelia's mind because she insists a white woman started stalking her right after the assault, and is still haunting her fifteen years later. Feelia shrieks and carries on whenever she 'sees' the woman, and shouts at people who try to shut her up.
- Dorian is the mother of Lecia, the last girl killed in 1999. Dorian's spent years haunting the police station, insisting her daughter wasn't a prostitute, and exhorting them to find the killer. The grieving mother owns a fried fish shop in West Adams and feeds local streetwalkers who drop in. Now Dorian has been finding dead birds outside her restaurant, and thinks someone is trying to frighten her.
- Julianna was the child being babysat by Lecia on the night the teen was slain. Now Julianna is grown up, a strip club waitress who provides 'extra services' in the back. Julianna drinks and uses drugs to get through the day, and fears she'll never be able to get out of the debasing lifestyle. Julianna's hobby is photography, and she constantly snaps pictures of her prostitute friends, documenting the bleakness of their lives.
- Anneke is a married El Salvadoran woman who immigrated to Los Angeles with her husband and young daughter. The family is solidly middle class and Anneke wants nothing to do with (what she sees as) undesirable elements in the neighborhood. Anneke is obsessed with keeping her home and life in perfect order, and she sent her daughter Marella away to school to keep her safe.
- Marella is Anneke's daughter, now in her twenties and an art school graduate. Marella does performance art as well as modern installations with moving images.
Marella is living with her parents in West Adams, but has spent so much time away that she's almost a stranger to the area. Marella has bad memories of her life in El Salvador, and her art often depicts women as victims of sexual and physical violence.
- Esmerelda (Essie) Perry is a police detective who moved from homicide to vice after an unfortunate incident. The male cops in Perry's station steer the 'nuisance complaints' her way, so she gets to hear Feelia's allegations of a stalker and Dorian's report about dead birds. As Perry is looking into these complaints she makes discoveries about the serial killer.
The book doesn't focus on the identity of the serial killer, though that is revealed. The novel is more a character study than a murder mystery and Pochoda's portrayal of the six main characters, and the people around them, is vivid and perceptive - so we get a feel for the factors that shaped their lives.
We also get a peek at the ambiance of West Adams: the clubs; the streets; the bridges; the former mansions split into apartments; the nosy neighbors; the commercial establishments; the mixture of people; and so on.
Pochoda is a master storyteller and this is an excellent book. Highly recommended.
Thanks to Netgalley, the author (Ivy Pochoda), and the publisher (HarperCollins Publishers/Ecco) for a copy of the book.
Rating: 4 stars
